Standard Chartered pilots Ripple to address cross-border payment frictions - Trade Treasury Payments

Standard Chartered has conducted pilot tests leveraging Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure, exploring alternatives to legacy systems such as SWIFT in a bid to modernise cross-border transaction flows.

Standard Chartered’s collaboration with Ripple involved two distinct pilots. The first explored how distributed ledger technology (DLT) could address duplicate invoice financing in trade finance. This effort included participation from DBS Bank (an early adopter of Ripple’s custody solution) and Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).

The second pilot focused on cross-border payments. Ripple’s infrastructure, which uses XRP to facilitate near-instant settlement, was deployed to evaluate whether greater speed and transaction visibility could be achieved relative to existing SWIFT protocols. 

There is a growing recognition that existing systems – though robust – were not designed for the digital-native economy.

Ripple’s proposes to reduce the number of intermediaries, introduce programmable logic via smart contracts, and settle transactions in seconds, rather than days. With the World Bank recently identifying XRP as one of the more efficient assets for cross-border settlement, Ripple’s offering is becoming part of mainstream architectural discussions.

While Standard Chartered’s trials remain exploratory, they are a step toward rethinking foundational payment architecture. Whether this results in full-scale implementation is, at this stage, unclear. However, the willingness to test alternatives to SWIFT’s strong entrenchment in international payments may be a sign that there is a readiness to adapt.