Messages, smart contracts, real-world cases and more

Together, Swift and Chainlink have developed into one of the most remarkable partnerships between traditional finance and blockchain technology. For nearly a decade, both organizations have been pursuing one common goal, allowing financial institutions to access blockchain networks without dropping the infrastructure, messaging standards and operational controls already in use.

Swift is a platform with trillions of daily transactions based on its global messaging network, while Chainlink has become the largest oracle and interoperability network of blockchains. Together they lay the foundation for institutional adoption of tokenized assets, cross-chain settlement and automated financial workflows.

Early foundations laid in Sibos

Its origins date back to the Sibos 2016 event, when many branches of the financial industry considered blockchain itself an experimental technology. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov demonstrated a vision of intelligent contracts that could interact with real-world information and payment rails at the time.

Using Oracle infrastructure, initial demonstrations showed how financial information could inform on-chain contracts and initiate Swift-based ISO 20022-compliant payment messages. This first demonstration of the concept outlined an essential lesson, namely that blockchains could only improve financial markets to the extent that they were interoperable with existing systems.

Accelerated interoperability between networks

As Chainlink went into production and became commonplace in the decentralized finance world, Swift continued to explore blockchain capital markets. Their collaboration with industry increased through industry conferences such as SmartCon and conferences organized by Swift, in which both groups described how institutions can connect backend systems to a range of blockchains using well-known standards.

The biggest breakthrough was the implementation of the Chainlink CrossChain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP. The technology enables the transfer of data and tokens between both public and private blockchains, at the command of Swift messages. The strategy makes Swift a one-gate institution for a fast-growing onchain ecosystem.

Institutional pilots and practical examples

The alliance ventured into implementation through pilots of large-scale industries. In 2023, Swift and Chainlink partnered with leading banks and market infrastructure to demonstrate secure cross-chain exchange of tokenized assets. These experiments showed that institutions were able to model settlement workflows over different networks without having to recreate their main systems.

In parallel, another use case that became critical was business action processing. Three years later, Swift and Chainlink, together with the global custodians and asset managers, standardized the process of sourcing, validating and distributing corporate action data by integrating AI, oracle networks and blockchains. The end result is cleaner data, faster processing and less operational risk.

Integrate tokenized assets with existing payments

Settlement is a major issue for institutions venturing into digital assets. In 2024, Swift, Chainlink and UBS Asset Management previewed a model in which tokenized fund subscriptions and redemptions could be completed via offchain fiat payments. Chainlink coordinated the onchain issuance and token burning; and Swift sent payment routes to existing rails.

2025: Establishment of institutional standards

In 2025, the next step in the collaboration was the introduction of the Digital Transfer Agent technical standard. The framework, launched at Sibos, allows institutions to handle the workflow of tokenized funds from the existing systems in direct ISO 20022 messages sent via Swift and coordinated by Chainlink’s Runtime Environment.

Meanwhile, there was a second wave of the corporate action program moving towards production preparedness. New validation roles are implemented to ensure data accuracy, and confirmed records are distributed across Swift and various blockchain networks using the CCIP. This transitions into experimentation towards a scalable implementation at the industry level.

A shared vision for Onchain Finance

Swift, Chainlink and several financial institution leaders emphasized the importance of common standards and verifiable data at Sibos and SmartCon 2025, when markets go onchain. The theme was the same: interoperability, security and continuity of operations are non-negotiable in terms of institutional adoption.

Swift and Chainlink enable institutions to digitally enter the asset markets by allowing them to match blockchain innovation with an established financial infrastructure. As their relationship shows, collaboration, as opposed to disruption, will define the next phase of global finance.