Four separate tokenized deposit networks are now processing live interbank transactions. Swift's blockchain-based ledger executed its first weekend cross-border USD payment on September 5, 2026, settling a Singapore-to-New York transfer between DBS and Citi in minutes — a transaction that would h...
"We envisage a future where more and more banks are able to use the ledger, that then enables velocity of movement of settlements of payments at a much higher scale." — Debopama Sen, Global Head of Payments, Citi
Four separate tokenized deposit networks are now processing live interbank transactions. Swift's blockchain-based ledger executed its first weekend cross-border USD payment on September 5, 2026, settling a Singapore-to-New York transfer between DBS and Citi in minutes — a transaction that would have waited until Monday under conventional rails. JPMorgan's Kinexys has surpassed $4 trillion in cumulative volume at $7 billion daily across eight currencies. Fnality's Sterling Payment System, backed by central bank money at the Bank of England, is scaling from its initial four bank participants. Visa, taking a parallel stablecoin-based approach, reported $70 billion in annualized stablecoin settlement at its 2026 Payments Forum, up from a $7 billion run rate one quarter earlier.
The convergence is structural: banks are building tokenized deposit infrastructure to preserve their role as settlement intermediaries while matching the 24/7 availability that stablecoin networks already provide. The $303 billion stablecoin market has demonstrated demand for always-on digital money. Banks are now responding — not with stablecoins of their own, but with tokenized representations of existing commercial bank deposits that maintain the regulatory and balance-sheet structures of traditional banking.
This report compares the four leading tokenized deposit networks by architecture, scale, regulatory status, and economic model. The data points to a fragmented but accelerating buildout in which no single network has achieved dominance.
Swift announced its blockchain-based ledger ready for initial use in July 2026. Seventeen banks across six continents — ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds, Mashreq, MUFG, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB, and Wells Fargo — are participating in a controlled proof-of-concept scheduled to run through December 2026.
Three live transaction milestones have occurred in September 2026:
Swift's architecture positions it as an orchestration layer rather than a settlement layer. The ledger sequences and validates the movement of tokenized deposits between the individual ledgers of participating banks. Final settlement still occurs through existing payment systems. Thierry Chilosi, Swift's chief business officer, described the approach as "extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money."
The strategic logic is clear: Swift connects 11,000+ financial institutions globally. By offering tokenized deposit orchestration over existing messaging infrastructure, it avoids requiring banks to adopt a new network. The risk is equally clear: as an orchestration layer rather than a settlement layer, Swift's ledger adds a coordination function but does not change the underlying settlement finality.
Kinexys, formerly JPM Coin, has processed over $4 trillion cumulatively since launch, with average daily volume exceeding $7 billion. In June 2026, JPMorgan expanded the platform from three currencies (USD, EUR, GBP) to eight, adding AUD, HKD, JPY, CNH, and SGD to serve Asia-Pacific cross-border flows.
Key 2026 developments:
Unlike Swift's multi-bank orchestration model, Kinexys operates as a single-bank network: all tokenized deposits are liabilities of JPMorgan Chase. This creates a closed loop where transactions between JPMorgan clients settle instantly on the bank's own ledger. The Base and Canton integrations signal an intent to extend this closed-loop liquidity onto public and permissioned blockchains, though these remain in proof-of-concept.
The trade-off is network breadth. Swift's 17-bank pilot already spans six continents and multiple currencies with interbank settlement. Kinexys offers deeper liquidity and higher throughput within its own client base but requires bilateral agreements or external blockchain integrations to reach non-JPMorgan counterparties.
Fnality International operates a structurally distinct model: settlement in central bank money rather than commercial bank deposits. The Sterling Fnality Payment System (FnPS) launched controlled live payments in December 2023 and received settlement finality designation from the Bank of England in December 2024, making it the UK's only DLT system with that regulatory status.
Initial participating banks include Lloyds Banking Group, Banco Santander, and UBS, with BNP Paribas onboarded in July 2025. The system uses a digital representation of funds held at the Bank of England — effectively a wholesale CBDC proxy without being formally classified as one.
In September 2026, Fnality appointed former Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe as chair of its UK board, and former Bundesbank executive Jochen Metzger to its European supervisory board. These appointments signal preparation for USD and EUR system launches, pending regulatory approvals. The company raised $136 million in a Series C led by WisdomTree, with Bank of America, Citi, Temasek, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Barclays among investors.
Fnality's advantage is settlement finality: transactions settle in central bank money with legal finality, eliminating counterparty credit risk between banks. Its constraint is scale — the system is in early-phase expansion with a limited number of banks, and the multi-currency rollout depends on regulatory approval in each jurisdiction.
Visa has taken a different architectural approach, building settlement infrastructure around third-party stablecoins rather than tokenized bank deposits. At the 2026 Payments Forum, Visa disclosed $70 billion in annualized stablecoin settlement, a figure that rose from a $7 billion run rate one quarter prior, and later from $20 billion annualized.
The platform now supports nine blockchains. In 2026, Visa added five: Tempo (co-founded by Stripe), Circle's Arc, the Canton Network, Coinbase's Base, and Polygon. Stablecoin-linked card programs number over 160 live or in development globally.
Visa has also announced plans to build a technology layer enabling banks to convert traditional deposits into programmable digital money, bridging the stablecoin and tokenized deposit approaches. The distinction matters: Visa's current settlement volume runs on stablecoins (primarily USDC), which are liabilities of non-bank issuers like Circle. Tokenized deposits, by contrast, remain liabilities of the issuing bank. Banks have expressed preference for tokenized deposits for wholesale use cases while accepting stablecoins for public blockchain and retail payments.
| Dimension | Swift Ledger | Kinexys | Fnality | Visa | |---|---|---|---|---| | Settlement Asset | Tokenized commercial bank deposits | JPMorgan deposit tokens | Central bank money (BoE) | Stablecoins (USDC) | | Network Type | Multi-bank orchestration | Single-bank closed loop | Multi-bank, central bank-backed | Card network settlement | | Cumulative Volume | Pilot phase (Sep 2026) | $4T+ cumulative | Controlled live phase | $70B annualized | | Daily Volume | Not disclosed | $7B+ avg daily | Not disclosed | ~$192M implied daily | | Currencies | USD, SGD (live) | 8 (USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, HKD, JPY, CNH, SGD) | GBP (live); USD, EUR planned | Multi-currency via stablecoins | | Bank Participants | 17 banks, 6 continents | JPMorgan clients | 4 banks (expanding) | Issuers and acquirers | | Settlement Finality | Via existing systems | On JPMorgan's ledger | Legal finality (BoE designated) | Via Visa settlement | | Regulatory Status | Swift-supervised | OCC-regulated bank | BoE settlement finality | Card network regulation | | 24/7 Capability | Yes (demonstrated) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Public Blockchain | No | Base, Canton (PoC) | No | 9 blockchains |
The total stablecoin market stands at approximately $303 billion as of September 2026, with USDT at $183.4 billion (60.6% share) and USDC at $74.2 billion. Supply grew 14.3% year-over-year from $269.4 billion in August 2025.
Stablecoins have established the baseline expectation for tokenized money: 24/7 availability, near-instant settlement, and programmability. The tokenized deposit initiatives reviewed here are, in economic terms, the banking system's response to that baseline.
According to Brookings Institution analysis, the key structural differences are:
The Dallas Federal Reserve published research in August 2026 noting that tokenized deposits could affect bank liquidity and maturity transformation if adoption scales. This remains a theoretical concern at current volumes but signals regulatory attention to systemic implications.
Banks have shown a revealed preference: according to a PYMNTS survey of 21 banks, institutions prefer issuing tokenized deposits and using third-party stablecoins, but not issuing their own stablecoins. The reasoning is balance-sheet preservation — tokenized deposits maintain the deposit relationship and the fractional-reserve economics that underpin bank profitability.
The tokenized deposit market is moving from proof-of-concept to controlled production across multiple competing architectures. Swift's multi-bank orchestration, Kinexys's single-bank depth, Fnality's central bank backing, and Visa's stablecoin settlement each address different segments of the $238 billion cross-border payments market.
The September 2026 live transactions on Swift's ledger represent a specific inflection: for the first time, multiple globally significant banks are settling tokenized deposits across borders through the messaging network that already connects 11,000 financial institutions. Whether this orchestration approach or Kinexys's closed-loop model or Fnality's central-bank-money approach proves more durable depends on factors not yet resolved — regulatory treatment of tokenized deposits at scale, interoperability between competing ledgers, and whether banks can match the 24/7 performance that stablecoins have already normalized.
The data shows convergence on a shared objective — always-on, programmable bank money — with fragmented execution. The economic value of these networks will ultimately be determined not by the technology architecture but by the number of counterparties each network connects and the volume of settlement obligations it can absorb.