Global Banks Partner with SWIFT in Groundbreaking Blockchain Pilot on Consensys’ Linea Network

Traditional finance giants are finally waking up to blockchain's potential—and they're bringing SWIFT along for the ride.

The Proof-of-Concept That's Shaking Banking

Major international banks just completed a landmark blockchain test run on Consensys' Linea network. This isn't just another crypto experiment—it's SWIFT's strategic move toward modernizing cross-border payments that currently crawl at traditional banking speeds.

What This Means for Finance

The pilot demonstrates how blockchain technology can slash settlement times from days to seconds. Banks are realizing that legacy systems can't compete with decentralized networks when it comes to efficiency and transparency. It's almost like they discovered fire after decades of rubbing sticks together.

The Cynical Take

Of course, watching traditional institutions 'innovate' by testing technology crypto natives mastered years ago does make you wonder—are they building the future or just trying to avoid becoming obsolete?

This collaboration signals a seismic shift: when SWIFT starts playing with Ethereum scaling solutions, you know decentralized infrastructure is winning.

SWIFT’s blockchain path was years in the making

Last year, SWIFT announced that live trials for digital asset and currency transactions across its network were slated for 2025. The current project with Linea appears to be the foundational technical work necessary to make those live trials feasible, moving the cooperative beyond theoretical research and into practical implementation.

Before this announcement, SWIFT published results from a series of trials that tested the movement of tokenized assets across both public and private blockchains. SWIFT’s research demonstrated that its existing secure messaging infrastructure could potentially function as a universal “interoperability layer,” connecting different distributed ledger technologies without requiring banks to undertake massive and costly systems integrations with each new platform.

The Linea project takes this concept a step further, exploring what happens when SWIFT’s own messaging Core is migrated on-chain, potentially creating a more native and efficient settlement layer.

For banks, the implications are significant. SWIFT’s system links more than 11,000 institutions, yet it has long been criticized as cumbersome and overly dependent on intermediaries. A successful blockchain integration could mean faster settlement times, reduced costs, and a more resilient architecture for cross-border payments.