Chainlink and Swift Envision Blockchain Interoperability for Financial Institutions

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) has partnered with Chainlink to explore the integration of blockchain networks into the financial industry. The collaboration aims to leverage Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to connect financial institutions' systems with various blockchain networks seamlessly. 

Several major financial institutions, including ANZ, BNP Paribas, Citi, and Lloyds Banking Group, will participate in trials to test the transfer of tokenized value over public and private blockchain networks. 

During the trials, SWIFT's infrastructure will demonstrate how it facilitates interoperability by allowing tokenized assets to be transferred within public blockchain wallets, between public and permissioned blockchains, and from Ethereum to other public blockchains. Chainlink will act as an enterprise abstraction layer, connecting the SWIFT network to the Ethereum Sepolia network, while Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol ensures interoperability between source and destination blockchains.

“Having a single interface for accessing the various blockchains that banks will have to transact on is both more secure and more efficient for their interaction with this new way of transacting among themselves and their clients. The connectivity between banks and blockchains created by CCIP can also enable the growth of DeFi, as banks will find it increasingly easy to interact with public blockchains and move value to and from them using their existing systems,” Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink, told BSC News.

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Connecting Banks and Blockchains

By successfully integrating major banks and clearing and settlement systems into web3, the collaboration aims to expand the crypto market from its current valuation of $1 trillion to $10 trillion.

“If even a small portion of the quadrillions of dollars in value flowing through the Swift network and its over 11,000 member banks makes its way onto blockchains, the entire blockchain industry could grow multiple times larger very quickly,” stated Nazarov.

As part of this collaboration, Swift and Chainlink will build upon previous SWIFT trials that were conducted in 2022, focusing on incorporating digital currencies and tokenized assets into the traditional financial ecosystem. The new experiments will address technical, operational, and regulatory challenges associated with operating in a blockchain environment., such as confidentiality and privacy of data, liability, and recourse when transacting with public blockchains.

SWIFT aims to establish an interoperable system that connects different blockchain networks, enabling financial institutions to seamlessly interact with multiple blockchain-based networks similar to traditional asset trading. The partnership recognizes the impracticality of building new infrastructure from scratch and instead seeks to help institutions leverage their existing infrastructure securely and compliantly.