For a very long time, many have discussed the replacement of Swift, greatly due to the belief that traditional companies were going to be anti-crypto and blockchain long enough to be replaced.
The thing is, the current administration has simply forced traditional finance to either integrate or get left behind.
With these companies increasingly choosing the smart path: embracing crypto and blockchain, many of those replacement theories become threatened in some form.
For instance, Ripple (and the XRP Ledger) has famously been marketed as the crypto project to take away Swift’s role in global finance, but recent development in the blockchain industry by Swift challenges every expectation that has piled on for years for XRP investors.
ledger
Swift introduces blockchain-based ledger
This landmark initiative—announced at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt—will extend Swift’s trusted platform into a digital environment, unlocking the potential for instant, always-on transactions at global scale and accelerating the industry’s transition to digital finance across more than 200 countries and territories.
“I'm very pleased to announce that we will add a blockchain-based ledger to our technology infrastructure to allow for trusted movement of tokenised value across the digital ecosystems.” Swift CEO Javier Perez-Tasso said, noting that the addition may be surprising to some.
“You may think, ‘Wow, aren’t those opposites? Swift and blockchain. TradFi and DeFi. Can they really go together?’ In the regulated system of the future, we believe they can. Banks are ready for it. And they’re asking us to play a bigger role.” – Swift report
For those who may be wondering what Swift is to start with, here's an AI summary:
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a global messaging network that allows financial institutions worldwide to securely transmit payment instructions and other financial messages, rather than transferring funds itself. It is a member-owned cooperative connecting institutions using unique SWIFT codes (or Bank Identifier Codes) to ensure accurate delivery of financial transactions. SWIFT is primarily used for international money transfers and other financial transactions like securities exchange and payment investigations.
SWIFT moves a substantial volume of transactions, processing almost 38 million encrypted messages daily across its network of 11,000 banks and financial institutions in over 200 countries. This volume means that the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) passes through the SWIFT network roughly every three days, highlighting its critical role in global finance for both payments and securities transactions.
I can't tell you how accurate these numbers are, but I can tell you for a fact that Swift is a critical infrastructure to global finance and adding blockchain to its infrastructure stack is a bold move.
One thing that many may have missed in the message is that this move to add a blockchain-based ledger to Swift’s infrastructure is due to demand from the banks.
Banks are ready for it. And they’re asking us to play a bigger role.
This is an interesting piece of information and it confirms what some of us have always predicted would happen. You see, even though changes in regulation of digital assets may be the underlying factor to recent increased institutional interest in crypto and blockchain, the real driver of adoption is demand.
The banks are pressured by clients' demands to explore the digital assets markets and also pressure to act quickly in the aspects of payments or risk losing significant market share to crypto-native payments solutions.
At the same time, traditional financial infrastructures are pressured by traditional companies such as the banks and investment institutions searching for solutions that enable them to easily integrate with this emerging market and build out products and services that keep them in the game.
This is the chain of influence forcing all of TradeFi to come on-chain.
What does this mean for crypto?
To put simply, it means that we're one more step closer to bringing the larger world to familiarity with crypto and blockchain tech. Much of what TradFi will build will always be designed to keep control, but every integration creates a bridge that allows DeFi to tap into mainstream finance and potentially change global finance forever.