IBM Adapter Lets Banks Join Swift Blockchain Using Existing Payment Messages

IBM took a significant step toward making blockchain-based money movement routine for regulated banks on September 24, announcing in beta the IBM Digital Asset Haven ISO 20022 Messaging Adapter — a piece of middleware that lets financial institutions instruct tokenized deposit transactions on Swift’s permissioned blockchain ledger using the same payment message format they already use for conventional cross-border transfers. The adapter eliminates the single largest obstacle to bank participation in the Swift blockchain pilot: the need to build entirely new operational systems to communicate with a distributed ledger. In a separate announcement, IBM simultaneously released a beta on-premises deployment of Digital Asset Haven, allowing regulated institutions to run the…