The infrastructure behind the next era of capital markets is being built on Chainlink and Swift

Chainlink says it is building the infrastructure behind the next era of capital markets through partnerships and technical milestones that connect traditional financial systems with blockchain networks.

Connecting traditional finance with blockchain networks

Working with Swift, DTCC, Euroclear and dozens of major financial institutions, the platform is focused on interoperability across legacy and emerging infrastructure, including tokenized bond settlements and automated corporate actions processing.

Swift, the messaging standard used by more than 11,500 financial institutions across 200+ countries, recently completed a digital asset interoperability trial. The initiative involved tokenized bond transactions with BNP Paribas Securities Services, Intesa Sanpaolo and Société Générale (FORGE). The trial demonstrated how Swift can orchestrate tokenized asset transactions across blockchains and existing enterprise systems.

The work builds on earlier collaboration between Swift, Chainlink and UBS Asset Management, which demonstrated cross-chain settlement of tokenized assets using existing Swift fiat payment rails. More than 12 financial organizations participated, including Citi, BNY Mellon, Euroclear, Clearstream and Lloyds Banking Group. The results were described as a replicable framework intended to be extended across Swift’s global network.

Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) is positioned as the technical backbone enabling settlement across public and private blockchains, allowing banks to access on-chain environments while operating within familiar Swift messaging standards.

At Sibos 2024, Chainlink Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov presented the capabilities to capital markets participants, showing how Swift integration with blockchains can be implemented through existing standards and Chainlink infrastructure.

Separately, under the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian, Swift, UBS Asset Management and Chainlink demonstrated the issuance and settlement of tokenized funds using traditional Swift fiat payment rails. The proof of concept said digital asset transactions settled through infrastructure already used by institutions across more than 200 countries, supporting the idea that tokenized finance and conventional payment systems can operate as a unified layer.

Building a shared data foundation for corporate actions

At Sibos 2025, Chainlink and 24 of the world’s largest financial institutions announced Phase 2 of their corporate actions initiative. Partners include Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, UBS and Wellington Management.

Phase 2 introduces a production-grade system with new data attestor and contributor roles assigned to trusted institutions. The roles are intended to validate and enrich AI-extracted corporate actions records with verifiable accuracy.

The Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) managed orchestration of multiple AI model outputs during the testing period. Confirmed results were converted into ISO 20022-compliant messages and delivered through the Swift Network.

In parallel, Chainlink CCIP distributed identical records across DTCC’s blockchain ecosystem and additional chain environments, enabling post-trade systems, smart contracts and custodians to access the same data simultaneously.

During testing, AI models reached nearly 100% data consensus across all evaluated corporate actions records. The system processed multilingual disclosures written in Spanish and Chinese. Cryptographic attestation by designated institutions created a verifiable chain of custody for each corporate action, and data accuracy for confirmed records reached 100%, which the initiative described as a new reliability standard.

The initiative refers to the resulting infrastructure as an “on-chain golden record,” described as a real-time, attested source of truth accessible by both blockchain platforms and traditional financial systems. It also says tokenized equities can reference the same confirmed data across public and private chains, supporting greater automation across on-chain markets.

Identity and compliance integration

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) extended the infrastructure through a strategic partnership with Chainlink. The combined solution integrates GLEIF’s verifiable Legal Identity Identifier with Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Identity and Automated Compliance Engine.

According to the initiative, institutions can verify asset provenance, enforce compliance policies programmatically, and meet regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions. It says these layers of infrastructure together form the backbone of a capital markets system built for the era ahead.