According to Cointelegraph, banks across North America, Europe, and Asia are gearing up to participate in new digital asset trials initiated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). SWIFT announced on October 3 that it will commence a digital asset trial on its network in 2025. The trial will focus on experimenting with transactions involving multiple digital currencies and assets.
The primary objective of these trials is to explore how the banking network can offer financial institutions unified access to various digital asset classes and currencies. Initial use cases will concentrate on payments, foreign exchange, securities, and trade, enabling multi-ledger delivery-versus-payment and payment-versus-payment transactions.
In its announcement, SWIFT emphasized the rapid growth of unconnected platforms and technologies within the digital asset economy, leading to an increasingly fragmented landscape. This fragmentation, according to SWIFT, poses significant challenges to global adoption by creating a complex web of 'digital islands.'
SWIFT aims to leverage its unique position to interlink these disparate networks with each other and with existing fiat currencies. This initiative is intended to enable its global community to seamlessly transact using digital assets and currencies alongside traditional forms of value.
Cointelegraph reached out to SWIFT for comments regarding which digital assets are likely to be part of its blockchain trials in 2024 but did not receive a response at the time of publication. This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.