Switzerland’s AMINA Bank and Crypto Finance Group have completed a pilot project that tested distributed ledger technology for domestic payments. The trial involved several financial institutions and focused on the settlement of Swiss franc transactions using existing regulatory and banking structures rather than introducing new forms of digital money.
The project was carried out on Google Cloud Universal Ledger, which is designed to support the continuous settlement of financial transactions. According to AMINA Bank, the initiative showed that DLT-based infrastructure can process transactions at near-instant speed while remaining compatible with established compliance and operational standards used by Swiss-regulated institutions. Representatives from AMINA noted that the bank integrated the technology directly into its core systems so that selected clients could access faster settlement times without changes to their usual processes.
Testing DLT within existing Swiss payment frameworks
Crypto Finance Group acted as the Currency Operator for the pilot, taking responsibility for the rulebook governing how participating banks interacted on the platform. Officials from Crypto Finance explained that the role included onboarding the institutions involved and ensuring that the testing framework was properly followed. Settlement actions themselves were executed between the banks.
Google Cloud also participated in the trial. Officials from the company said the work illustrated how cloud-based ledger infrastructure can be used to support regulated financial services, particularly where institutions aim to modernise payment flows without altering their balance-sheet functions.
The pilot is intended as a step toward wider deployment. AMINA and Crypto Finance indicated that future phases would aim to bring additional banks onto the platform, expand use cases to cross-border payments, and explore point-of-sale applications.
Crypto Finance Group, part of Deutsche Börse Group, provides digital asset services under regulatory approvals from FINMA, BaFin and the EU’s MiCAR framework. AMINA Bank, incorporated in Zug and supervised by FINMA, operates additional licensed entities in Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong.
