TradFi dilemma: Does Swift still matter in a stablecoin world?

Swift has been one of the foundations of international banking infrastructure for decades. But stablecoins offer a different way to move money—around the clock and without the traditional chain of bank messages. Can Swift preserve its role if digital money allows payment information and settlement itself to exist within the same infrastructure?

To respond to this challenge, Swift is turning to the technology that threatens to disrupt it. In August, HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live interbank transaction through the organization’s new blockchain-based ledger using tokenized bank deposits. Final settlement still took place through existing banking infrastructure.

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The first transaction shows that this is about more than simply speeding up existing transfers.

Swift is no longer limiting itself to modernizing bank messaging and is trying to secure a place in the world of tokenized money. The question is whether its existing banking network will be enough to preserve its central role as the architecture of international payments changes.

From messages to moving money

Swift and a bank transfer are not the same thing. The organization provides financial institutions with a secure network and messaging standards, while the money itself may move through correspondent accounts and other settlement systems.

This is where the complexity of an international payment arises: several banks, different verification systems, and infrastructure operating on different schedules may all be involved.

However, the idea that Swift itself is responsible for transfers taking several days is outdated. The network connects more than 11,500 financial institutions across more than 200 countries and territories. According to the organization, 75% of cross-border payments sent through its network reach the beneficiary bank in less than 10 minutes.

Stablecoins offer a different architecture. Payment information and digital money move through the same network, which operates around the clock. Swift is now trying to bring this feature into the banking system itself.

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The new blockchain-based ledger was developed with dozens of financial institutions, while 17 banks across six continents joined the first live transactions. The system records and validates interbank obligations and enables round-the-clock transactions involving tokenized deposits.

Stablecoins change the payment route

International payments have become one of the clearest use cases for stablecoins beyond cryptocurrency trading. A dollar-denominated token can be transferred between wallets regardless of banking hours, while the recipient does not necessarily need a U.S. dollar account at an American bank.

The advantage is particularly noticeable where correspondent banking chains are expensive or poorly developed. For companies, stablecoins offer a way to move funds between countries faster, while in economies with unstable currencies, they can serve both as a payment instrument and a way to hold dollars.

However, the scale of this competition can easily be overstated. Total stablecoin transaction volumes amount to tens of trillions of dollars, but a significant share comes from crypto trading, transfers between exchanges, and automated transactions.

According to estimates by McKinsey and Artemis based on late-2025 data, annual stablecoin payment volume stood at around $390 billion. Roughly $226 billion came from business-to-business payments, a segment that grew more than eightfold over the year.

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Compared with the global payments system, this remains relatively small. The threat to Swift lies less in the current volume of USDT or USDC than in the ability of a new payment model to bypass parts of the existing banking infrastructure.

Banks tokenize their money

The financial system’s response is not limited to modernizing Swift. Banks are also trying to change the form of money itself.

The HSBC and Standard Chartered transactions used tokenized deposits. Unlike USDT or USDC, such a deposit represents a direct liability of a commercial bank to its customer.

This distinction is fundamental to the banking model. Widespread stablecoin adoption could weaken banks’ direct relationship with customer deposits and shift part of that role to digital asset issuers.

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Tokenization allows banks to preserve their relationships with customers while offering round-the-clock settlement and the ability to interact with digital assets.

The Bank for International Settlements is exploring a similar model. Under Project Agorá, central and commercial banks are testing the use of tokenized reserves and bank deposits for international settlements.

But the emergence of multiple forms of digital money creates a new problem. One bank may use its deposit system, another may operate on a different network, while a stablecoin issuer may use a third. Instead of a unified infrastructure, the financial market risks becoming fragmented across incompatible systems.

This is where Swift has an opportunity to retain a central role. The organization has already tested interoperability between public and private blockchains, digital currencies, tokenized assets, and traditional infrastructure.

Its task may therefore be not to displace stablecoins, but to connect different forms of digital money.

Swift will have to redefine its role

Swift’s main advantage in this competition is not its technology, but its existing global banking infrastructure, common standards, and relationships built between financial institutions over decades.

In traditional payments, Swift’s value came primarily from reliably transmitting financial messages. But if both an asset and the information about its transfer exist within the same digital system, that function becomes less unique.

For banks, Swift’s value in the new system could instead come from providing a single point of connection rather than requiring separate integrations with every new ledger or digital asset.

The current volume of stablecoin payments, therefore, does not suggest that Swift is about to disappear. The more fundamental challenge is that tokenization is gradually eliminating the separation between the payment message and the movement of money itself—the distinction on which Swift’s historical role was built.

Yet the same transition creates another need: banks must connect tokenized deposits, stablecoins, and other digital assets with one another.

If Swift can use its existing banking network to solve that problem, blockchain may not push it out of international payments. Instead, it could change the very reason why Swift remains essential to the global financial system.