(1 October 2026 – Australia) ANZ has executed one of the world’s first live corporate treasury transactions using tokenised deposits on Swift’s ledger, demonstrating the technology’s potential to support the future of cross border payments.
The transaction brought together ANZ, BHP, Swift and Citi to complete US dollar payments between Melbourne and New York.
ANZ is the first Australian bank to use Swift’s blockchain ledger following a transaction by HSBC and Standard Chartered in August.
The technology is designed to minimise customer friction. BHP used its existing ANZ account and banking channel while tokenised deposits and digital ledger technology operated in the back office.
The successful payments demonstrated how shared ledger technology could support the evolution of cross border payments towards faster out-of-hours processing. It also confirmed Swift’s ledger can act as a secure connector between banks, enabling tokenised deposits issued by different institutions to work together seamlessly.
“These payments demonstrate how tokenised deposits can move between banks through shared industry infrastructure and supporting more efficient liquidity while remaining completely invisible to customers” commented ANZ Executive General Manager for Payments Services, Nigel Dobson.
“Many large, multi-national customers want to move money across countries, time zones and banks regardless of operating hours, and with the certainty it will arrive in near real-time. As the first Australian bank to use Swift’s ledger, our goal was to test how the benefits of new digital ledger technology can be delivered through the existing banking arrangements, using the accounts, channels and operational processes that our institutional customers already rely on.