Citi and DBS have completed a live tokenized U.S. dollar payment between Singapore and New York, marking what DBS described as the first successful weekend payment of its kind using Swift’s Digital Ledger. The transaction, executed on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, settled within minutes—far faster than the industry norm of up to two business days—and was announced by DBS on Monday.
The payment used tokenized deposits, which are digital claims against commercial banks rather than privately issued stablecoins. Swift’s blockchain-based ledger acted as an orchestration layer, recording, sequencing and validating payment obligations across the banks’ own systems through smart contracts, while final settlement remained on established financial infrastructure.
The test follows Swift’s initial live transaction pilot announced in July 2026, which includes 17 banks across six continents. DBS and Citi are among participants such as HSBC, BNP Paribas, BNY, Standard Chartered, UBS, Wells Fargo, ANZ and MUFG. The Citi-DBS transfer came after HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live interbank transaction in August.
Citi said it had already completed live transactions with First Abu Dhabi Bank and Singapore-based OCBC and expected additional tests with DBS and United Overseas Bank during September. The bank also said Citi Token Services processes about $1 billion in transactions and its round-the-clock dollar clearing service supports more than 300 banking clients.
DBS launched its own Token Services platform in 2024 and is the only Asian-headquartered institution in Swift’s 12-member core design group. Rachel Chew, DBS’s group chief operating officer and co-head of digital assets, said the transaction showed tokenized money moving from experimentation toward “real-world adoption.”
Neither bank disclosed the transaction’s value, customer or fees, and no commercial launch date or full production timetable has been released. The demonstration confirms banks can coordinate tokenized deposit instructions outside conventional operating hours, but broader availability still depends on more corridors, banks and production customers.
