SWIFT handles roughly $5 trillion in daily cross-border settlement transactions through more than 11,500 institutions across about 200 countries and territories. The network is reported to charge about 1% to 4% per transaction, and settlements usually take one to five business days.

Last month SWIFT launched a blockchain-based ledger, and HSBC and Standard Chartered subsequently completed the first real-time transfer on the system, reducing settlement times to seconds.

Industry outlook places the potential market for tokenized assets in the trillions. BNY Mellon expects stablecoins and tokenized cash to reach about $3.7 trillion by 2030, while Citi projects the tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion in the same period.