Digital Assets Take Center Stage at Swift’s Sibos 2025

Since Monday, Sibos, the largest global conference for payments and financial services, has been underway in Frankfurt. As Swift’s flagship event, it also served as the stage for several big announcements.

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Maximilian Vargas & Louis Tellier
October 02, 2025

On Monday, the SEC and CFTC hosted a joint roundtable, which was interesting for three reasons:

  1. This is their first real attempt in over a decade to align rulebooks (with digital assets in focus).

  2. Crypto founders from Polymarket and Kraken seated alongside CME and Nasdaq’s CEOs (a rare sight).

  3. CME CEO Terry Duffy flashed Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan the middle finger on stage (yes, really).

The clip will make it to the Hall of Fame. And while he likely wasn’t serious, it’s quite a turn to now hear Wall Street openly complain about crypto firms getting innovation exemptions.

Today, we’ll talk about:

  • Sibos 2026 recap: Digital assets take center stage

  • Interview: Why nine banks form a euro stablecoin consortium

  • Clearstream announces partnership with Circle

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

  • Visa is launching a stablecoin prefunding pilot. The initiative aims to address real-time funding and settlement frictions for institutions, enabling instant cross-border digital cash movement on programmable stablecoin rails. The rollout is planned for April 2026.🌍️

  • Deutsche Börse partners with Chainlink to bring market data onchain. Through this collaboration, more than 40 public and private blockchains within the Chainlink ecosystem will gain access to real-time data across a broad spectrum of asset classes, including equities, derivatives, and foreign exchange instruments.⛓️

  • Citi’s tokenized deposits now support interbank payments. While most tokenized deposit solutions operate in closed ecosystems, Citi has integrated its blockchain-based Citi Token Services with its 24/7 USD Clearing platform. This enables clients to initiate payments to any of the 250 banks across 40 jurisdictions connected to the network.🇺🇸 

  • Ten financial institutions launch Regulated Layer One. The initiative, led by SWIAT, creates a shared DLT network under cooperative governance to deploy and scale tokenization and digital cash use cases. Founding members include ABN AMRO, DekaBank, DZ Bank, KfW, LBBW, Natixis, and NatWest.🇪🇺 

SIBOS 2025 RECAP

Digital Assets Take Center Stage at Swift’s Sibos 2025

All eyes on Frankfurt: Since Monday, Sibos, the largest global conference for payments and financial services, has been underway in Frankfurt. For four days, the city has become the center of global finance, bringing together central banks, regulators, banks, payment providers, and market infrastructures. As Swift’s flagship event, it also served as the stage for several big announcements.

Swift’s blockchain: The conference opened with a major headline. On Monday morning, Swift CEO Javier Pérez-Tasso announced the development of a blockchain prototype with Consensys for 24/7 cross-border payments. The initiative already involves around 30 banks, including BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and NatWest.

  • “Over the past couple of years, we’ve shown that Swift can move tokenized value across public and private blockchains and link CBDCs globally. Banks are ready for it, and they want us to play a bigger role,” Pérez-Tasso told the audience.

Stablecoins in the spotlight: Among the use cases, Swift is exploring the exchange of stablecoins for fiat currencies. Financial institutions are now starting to adopt them at scale, driven by regulatory clarity, rising demand for onchain cash and the promise of cross-border payments with 24/7 settlement.

  • Entering into traditional markets: The expansion of stablecoins beyond crypto-native markets was highlighted by Clearstream’s announcement that it will integrate Circle’s USDC and EURC into its existing environment for securities and crypto. In our conversation, Thilo Derenbach of Clearstream framed stablecoins as a form of commercial bank money, while the market awaits the arrival of CBDCs (more insights below).

Central banks on watch: CBDCs themselves were a central theme at Sibos, too. The European Central Bank, one of the frontrunners in development, emphasized the digital euro and wholesale CBDC as critical to safeguarding monetary sovereignty. In a panel, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone, also highlighted the central bank’s potential role in avoiding liquidity fragmentation with Project Appia.

  • “Should we have one big ledger with central bank money, commercial bank money, tokenized deposits, stablecoins, and assets, or an ecosystem of interoperable ledgers? […] Those are very fundamental questions, because we will stay in this new world for a long time. So we better not mess it up from the beginning.”

The push for standards: Efforts to achieve such interoperability were evident across the conference. Euroclear and Clearstream demonstrated their newly announced eurobond digitisation standard, while Swift introduced a tokenization platform positioned as a step toward establishing common standards.

  • “Standards are no longer abstract ideals. What was mere talk in 2024 has become a tangible pilot in 2025,” explained Zakaryae Boudi, CEO of FeverTokens, a startup that supplied much of the smart contract technology behind Swift’s new platform.

Swift as traffic controller: Taken together, these initiatives underscored a broader theme running through Sibos: Swift is pushing to establish itself as the connective tissue of the tokenized economy and the industry seems to welcome that role. As Nicholas Soo, Head of Payment Products at HSBC, put it:

  • “You at Swift are probably in pole position to also become the road traffic controller to connect all these new rails of tokenized assets.”

Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao is President of Banking and Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs. He also serves on the International Technology Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

When I first came to Sibos a couple of years ago, there was almost no mention of blockchain or DLT. This year, it was everywhere — from the main stages to private meetings. Stablecoins, tokenized securities, and interoperability have become part of the core agenda.

What struck me most is who is now driving these discussions. Until last year, we mainly engaged with innovation and digital asset teams. Today, it’s the Global Heads of Custody, Cash Management, and other business leaders sitting across the table. That shift signals a change in mindset: Instead of just testing the tech, institutions are now weighing business models, efficiencies, and risks.

That change has brought new depth. Technical questions on how to connect legacy systems to public blockchains remain, but they now sit alongside questions of business value: how to streamline processes and what tokenized securities mean in practice.

EURO STABLECOINS

“Establishing a Common European Standard”: Why Nine Banks Are Joining Forces to Issue a Euro Stablecoin

A united front: Last week, nine European banks, including UniCredit and ING, announced they are forming a consortium to issue a euro stablecoin, with the launch slated for the second half of 2026.

Why it matters: This marks the first collective initiative of its kind, following earlier individual launches such as Banking Circle’s EURITE (August 2024), Société Générale’s EURCV (April 2023), and AllUnity’s EURAU (July 2025).

  • “This consortium aims to establish a common European stablecoin standard. Initially, we expect demand from corporates, but over time it could extend to retail, B2C, and DeFi,” explained Floris Lugt, Lead Digital Assets at ING Wholesale Banking.

Interview: In our conversation, Lugt outlined the plan to define a European standard, the governance model behind it, and the first use cases the consortium will pursue.

__________________

On why ING and eight other banks chose to form a consortium:

“European customers, both companies and consumers, don’t want to deal with dozens of different euro stablecoins. They want one trusted standard. That’s why we formed a consortium: to create a common infrastructure banks can build on top of, rather than nine competing instruments, and also to have a wide distribution. That is best supported if you have a large consortium of banks backing it, both in terms of access to customers and liquidity management.

We also saw that if each bank would issue their own stablecoin, then they need to become interchangeable. That’s complex and inefficient. A lot of the benefits of blockchain are immediately taken away.

It’s taken us three years to get here. We started with a smaller group of banks, testing feasibility from different angles, client demand, risk management, regulatory fit. The conclusion was yes: there is a need and we can deliver this safely.”

On governance, reserves, and the regulatory setup:

“The issuer will be a standalone company based in the Netherlands and supervised within the Eurozone. All nine banks will be equal shareholders, regardless of size, and the company will have its own management and supervisory board. Each bank will be able to develop its own products, custody, wallets, liquidity tools, and offer them to clients as they see fit.

We want the stablecoin to operate as independently as possible. That means reserve management cannot become a political game where larger banks push for a bigger share. The exact reserve structure, where they are held and with which banks, is still to be decided. It could involve multiple banks or custodians, including non-consortium members. What matters is that it is robust and trusted.”

On the relationship with the ECB’s digital euro:

“Our initiative is not a reaction to the digital euro. We see the two as complementary. The ECB wants to build an alternative payment system, which may not even be blockchain-based. We are focused on what becomes possible thanks to blockchain: programmability, automation, onchain settlement.

We don’t have the ambition to replace existing retail payments that already work well. Instead, we want to create new possibilities, supply-chain payments triggered automatically when a shipment arrives, e-commerce transactions split instantly between the platform, the supplier, and the tax authority, or settlement in tokenized markets. That’s where a blockchain-native stablecoin adds value.”

On the choice of networks and DeFi adoption:

“Our strategy is multi-chain, spanning both permissioned and permissionless environments. For practical reasons, we’ll prioritize certain networks first, but the goal is broad availability, not being tied to a single ecosystem.

We deliberately chose not to build our own L1 or L2, as that would only create yet another closed system. We want to benefit from network effects, which means leveraging the chains where activity already exists.

Even if we wouldn’t pursue DeFi integrations, once the stablecoin is issued, it might still naturally find its way there.”

On first use cases and the long-term ambition:

“Initially, we expect demand from corporates and financial institutions, for cross-border payments, improved payment solutions and tokenized securities settlement. But it can extend to retail, B2C, and DeFi over time. The stablecoin should become a general means of onchain payment.

For users, we see it as digital cash. You hold it in your wallet to pay and be paid, but it’s not a savings product, not something we’ll promote as a store of value.

We’ve started with nine banks, but the consortium is open. Distribution won’t be limited to shareholders. We’re already in discussions with others, and we believe the network can grow to billions in issuance, not just millions.”

A conversation with Thilo Derenbach, Head of Sales & BD, Digital Securities Services at Clearstream, about the Deutsche Börse Group’s partnership with stablecoin issuer Circle.

  1. Stablecoins 2030 (Citi) — A report analyzing the rise of stablecoins and their market outlook for 2030, including an analysis of their coexistence with bank tokens and CBDCs.

  2. Optimal Policy for Financial Market Tokenization (IMF) — A study on how tokenization alters financial market structure, analyzing things like broker competition, risks of fragmentation, and the policy frameworks needed to ensure efficient, interoperable markets.

  3. Digital Assets Team Playbook for Financial Institutions (Tokenized Economies Institute) — A practical guide for financial institutions on building effective digital asset teams, covering opportunities, challenges, and strategic positioning in tokenization, payments, custody, and compliance.

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