ANZ, BHP and Citi complete live cross-border tokenised-deposit payment using Swift ledger

ANZ has completed a live cross-border corporate treasury transaction with BHP, Citi and Swift using tokenised bank deposits, testing whether digital-ledger infrastructure can move corporate liquidity between banks without changing the customer’s existing banking process.

The transaction involved US dollar payments between Melbourne and New York and made ANZ the first Australian bank to use Swift’s blockchain-based ledger.

BHP initiated the transaction through its existing ANZ account and normal banking channel. The tokenised deposits and distributed-ledger infrastructure operated behind the scenes rather than requiring the corporate to hold a separate digital asset or use a new front-end payment system.

That feature is important for corporate treasury adoption. Much of the friction around tokenised cash has centred on whether companies would need new wallets, operating processes or technology integrations before using it. In this transaction, the experimental infrastructure was placed beneath an established bank relationship.

Swift’s ledger acted as the connection between participating banks, demonstrating that tokenised deposits issued by different institutions could interoperate through shared infrastructure.

The test is aimed at eventually enabling faster cross-border payments outside conventional processing windows. For a multinational corporate such as BHP, that could allow liquidity to be moved between markets and time zones closer to when it is required, rather than waiting for banking systems in another jurisdiction to open.

The working-capital significance lies primarily in cash positioning rather than financing. More continuous settlement could reduce delays between accounts and give treasury teams greater control over when liquidity reaches subsidiaries, suppliers or other counterparties.

The transaction remains an early-stage demonstration rather than a generally available commercial payment service. ANZ did not disclose the value transferred, pricing or a timetable for full-scale customer deployment.

The test nevertheless moves tokenised deposits from conceptual interoperability work into a live corporate treasury transaction involving a major multinational company and two global banks.