SWIFT has reportedly mobilized a consortium including BNY Mellon and BNP Paribas for a pivotal experiment that includes migrating its core messaging system onto ConsenSys’ Ethereum layer-2, Linea.
According to a Sept. 26 report from The Big Whale, the global financial messaging cooperative has initiated a development project with more than a dozen major institutions to experiment with putting its foundational messaging framework on-chain. A source within a participating bank indicated the project is a multi-month endeavor, characterizing it as a precursor to a significant technological transformation for the interbank payments industry.
ConsenSys’ Linea was reportedly chosen due to its strong privacy features, powered by advanced cryptographic proofs — an essential requirement for meeting strict banking compliance standards.
SWIFT’s blockchain journey has been years in the making
SWIFT had previously indicated plans to conduct live trials for digital asset and currency transfers across its network in 2025. The current Linea initiative appears to be preparatory technical work to make those trials practical, moving beyond conceptual research into applied implementation.
Earlier experiments tested the transfer of tokenized assets on both public and private blockchains. Findings suggested that SWIFT’s existing secure messaging network could serve as an “interoperability layer,” connecting multiple distributed ledger systems without requiring banks to implement costly, platform-specific integrations.
The Linea experiment extends this idea by exploring the effects of running SWIFT’s messaging core directly on-chain. For banks, this could mean faster transaction settlement, reduced operational costs, and a more robust architecture for global payments. SWIFT currently connects more than 11,000 institutions worldwide, but its system has faced criticism for being slow and heavily reliant on intermediaries.