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Multiple crypto news sources reported SWIFT would test XRP and Hedera tokens in November, but no official SWIFT announcements confirm these trials.
November marks the deadline for adopting the ISO 20022 international payments standard, making it an unlikely time for SWIFT to run experimental cryptocurrency tests.
Long-term crypto integration with SWIFT seems likely, but the timeline will be slower and more cautious than current rumors suggest.
The XRP (Ripple) (CRYPTO: XRP) investor community is celebrating some juicy rumors these days.
Near the end of August, several crypto news sources said that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) was running test transactions using XRP and Hedera (CRYPTO: HBAR) tokens.
That could be fantastic news for XRP owners. The SWIFT system handles about $190 trillion of international money transfers per year. Collecting just a tiny transaction fee for even a small portion of that massive business pie would add a ton of value to the XRP ecosystem.
But it's not all roses and rainbows. This week, SWIFT and Ripple representatives have been duking it out over social media channels. Coming so soon after the technical trial reports, I'm left wondering whether the suggested co-opetition is more like a classic head-to-head competition instead.
Plenty of crypto-oriented news sites reported that the SWIFT organization will run XRP and Hedera tests in November. The group has indeed explored cryptocurrencies and digital transaction ledgers before, and the pending ISO 20022 cross-border transactions standard has a crypto section in its official FAQ. So the idea of XRP trials looks plausible at a glance.
At the same time, the ISO standard doesn't specify any particular crypto names that would be useful, approved, or recommended for these ISO-compliant international payments. Instead, it's up to each cryptocurrency to meet the messaging requirements of the ISO 20022 rules. From bank transaction codes and data source schemes to nitty-gritty details like character encoding and fee collection addresses, that's a really elaborate rulebook.
But if thousands of old-school banks can do it, why not Ripple Labs or any other cryptocurrency group?
The thing is, I can't find an announcement of XRP and Hedera testing in SWIFT's news channels. There's something fishy about these collaboration reports.
November is special because that's the deadline for adopting the new ISO 20022 standard. The old MT standard starts to phase out at this point, to be discontinued in November 2026. By the end of 2025, the sophisticated ISO standard should apply to the vast majority of international money transfers, both large and small.
And that would be a really weird time to run a technical test of specific cryptocurrency ledgers.
Sure, the incoming ISO standard opens the door for blockchain-based transactions, but the provisions are a work in progress. For now, blockchain addresses, smart contracts, and other messages can be included in ISO-compliant transactions, but they don't have to be there and the SWIFT system certainly hasn't specified the format of any crypto messaging yet. That's slated for a future revision of ISO 20022, and I don't even see a specific target year for that switch.
