A group of British lenders including HSBC and Barclays has successfully finalized the transfer of value across its member institutions using a distributed ledger. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Nationwide, and Santander moved the first interbank funds of this type globally by converting bank deposits into digital tokens. In a series of tests reported by Reuters, Lloyds, NatWest, and Barclays executed two remortgage transactions, while another three participants, including HSBC, conducted a person-to-person payment.

The process uses blockchain rails to enable programmable payments while ensuring that the money remains on the participating banks' own balance sheets. Separately, IBM has linked its Digital Asset Haven platform to the Swift blockchain ledger, a move that allows banks to settle these types of tokenized deposit transactions on a 24/7 basis from their own servers.