SWIFT tests XRP and HBAR for faster cross-border payments

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) tests XRP and HBAR to boost its cross-border payment infrastructure.

Summary

• SWIFT tests XRP and HBAR for faster cross-border payments due to their alignment with the ISO 20022 standard.
• The move follows Brad Garlinghouse’s projection that XRP could capture 14% of SWIFT’s liquidity within 5 years.

SWIFT is reportedly experimenting with the integration of Ripple (XRP) and Hedera (HBAR) as part of efforts to improve its cross-border payment infrastructure. Both XRP and HBAR are being considered due to their compatibility with ISO 20022 financial messaging standards.

SWIFT’s pilot tests are said to focus on two specific technologies: Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which uses XRP as a bridge currency to facilitate faster transfers, and Hedera’s hashgraph consensus mechanism, known for its high throughput and energy efficiency.

For context, traditional SWIFT transfers can take 1-5 business days and cost $10-$50 per transaction, whereas XRP transactions typically settle in 3-5 seconds at a cost of roughly $0.0002. Hedera, meanwhile, can process up to 10,000 transactions per second.

The development comes after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse projected at the XRP Ledger Apex 2025 event in Singapore that the XRP Ledger could capture 14% of SWIFT’s global liquidity within 5 years, stating:

“SWIFT today has two components—messaging and liquidity. Liquidity is owned by banks. I think less about the messaging and more about liquidity. If you’re driving all the liquidity, it’s good for XRP. So, in five years, I’d say 14%.”

The reports coincide with another major development for Ripple. The company announced today that it will begin distributing its RLUSD stablecoin in Japan by Q1 of next year.