Banks around the world will next year start live trials of digital asset and currency transactions over the Swift network.

While the Swift network has been used to carry out digital asset transactions in test environments, the move to live trials is being pitched as a major step towards large scale institutional adoption.

Commercial and central banks across Asia, Europe and North America will soon start live pilots, which Swift says will demonstrate how they can transact interchangeably across both existing and emerging asset and currency types using their current Swift connection.

The tests will involve an advanced version of Swift infrastructure that is capable of orchestrating digital asset and currency transactions across networks for the first time.

Swift is taking on a key challenge in the continuously evolving digital asset market: the rise of disconnected digital platforms, or ‘digital islands’, that could hinder more widespread adoption and ease of use for new forms of value.

Currently, 134 countries are exploring CBDCs, and the size of the tokenised assets market is forecast by Standard Chartered and Synpulse to rise as high as $30 trillion by 2034.

However, Swift argues that without interconnectivity between platforms, global adoption is set to remain fragmented. The group thinks it can address this through its global network to interlink various digital and traditional currency platforms, providing a single system for banks to transact across borders.

Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer, Swift, says: “For digital assets and currencies to succeed on a global scale, it’s critical that they can seamlessly coexist with traditional forms of money.

“With our vast global reach, we are uniquely positioned to bridge both emerging and established forms of value, and we’re now focused on demonstrating this in real-world, mainstream applications.”