Singapore's three banks net tokenized deposits on Swift's ledger, then settle elsewhere
DBS, OCBC and UOB moved Singapore dollars between each other as tokenized deposits, which is the first time a domestic interbank market has done it.
Bank
United Overseas Bank Limited
The Singapore bank that says it was the first headquartered there to transact on Swift's blockchain-based ledger, in Hong Kong dollars with HSBC on 26 August 2026, and which pre-announced the Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions it completed with DBS and OCBC two weeks later.
The profile
UOB describes itself as a leading Asian bank with a global network across Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific, Europe and North America, operating through its head office in Singapore and banking subsidiaries in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, with about 430 branches and offices in 19 markets. It says it has grown organically and through strategic acquisitions since its incorporation in 1935, and is rated Aa1 by Moody's and AA- by both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch. It uses the phrase One Bank for ASEAN for its regional positioning. Its tokenized deposit work is the clearest published sequence of any bank on Swift's ledger. On 26 August 2026 it said that it and HSBC had completed live cross-border transactions in Hong Kong dollars over the ledger, making UOB in its own words the first Singapore-headquartered bank to execute live transactions on the platform, and that it was 'preparing to execute Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions on Swift's ledger in September 2026' involving other partner banks. On 10 September it did so, with DBS and OCBC, in domestic Singapore dollars. Its head of group transaction banking, So Lay Hua, describes the progression as an expansion 'from Hong Kong dollar to Singapore dollar and US dollar transactions beyond traditional banking hours'. What none of the releases gives is a size, a count or a price.
Products and services
- Tokenized deposits on Swift's ledger
- Bank-issued digital money recorded as a tokenized deposit obligation on UOB's own infrastructure. The bank has used it for cross-border Hong Kong dollars with HSBC and for domestic Singapore dollars with DBS and OCBC, in both cases with settlement completing through existing systems.
Coverage
Developments in which United Overseas Bank Limited is a named party, newest first.
On the record
DBS, OCBC and UOB exchange tokenised deposits in Singapore dollars
The three banks said they had completed the first live domestic interbank Singapore dollar transactions using tokenized deposits over Swift's ledger. Their release describes the ledger as an orchestration layer that matched and netted the obligations before final settlement ran through existing systems, and gives no value, count, fee or client.