SWIAT GmbH
SWIAT GmbH is a Frankfurt fintech that runs a private blockchain on which banks issue, trade and settle digital securities. Since November 2025 SWIAT has also held a BaFin license to keep crypto securities registers under the German Electronic Securities Act, the eWpG.
DekaBank founded SWIAT in 2022 to bundle its blockchain work in a subsidiary, and the name stands for Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer. Today DekaBank, LBBW, Standard Chartered and the fintech Comyno hold the shares of the company.
From DekaBank subsidiary to bank joint venture
SWIAT started as a subsidiary of DekaBank, with Henning Vollbehr as its first CEO. In 2023 the company opened to further shareholders, Standard Chartered became a partner, and Dr. Timo Reinschmidt joined the management as co-CEO and chief commercial officer.
Dr. Timo Reinschmidt now leads SWIAT as CEO, and Felix Miederer is co-CEO and chief operating officer. The advisory board includes Dirk Kipp of LBBW, Martin Müller of DekaBank, Henrik Raber of Standard Chartered, Markus Büttner of Comyno and Jens Siebert of KPMG.
The SWIAT network and its validators
The SWIAT network consists of a transaction platform and an innovation platform for banks. On the transaction platform banks issue, trade and settle digital assets, while the innovation platform is for building their own decentralized applications on the same infrastructure.
Independent IT companies run the validator nodes that confirm transactions on the blockchain. In September 2023 SWIAT named GFT, adesso, Sopra Steria and think tank Business Solutions as its first validators.
Blockchain Pfandbrief and settlement in central bank money
In August 2024 Berlin Hyp issued a mortgage Pfandbrief of 100 million euros as a crypto security on the SWIAT blockchain, with DekaBank as registrar, market maker and custodian. KfW bought 10 million euros of the issue in April 2025 and described it as the first blockchain Pfandbrief in Germany.
In October 2024 LBBW and DekaBank settled blockchain bonds on SWIAT in central bank money, as part of the trials of the ECB on wholesale settlement. The trades used the Trigger Solution of the Deutsche Bundesbank, which connects the blockchain to the TARGET payment system, and they ran without a central securities depository.
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License as crypto securities registrar
BaFin granted SWIAT a license to keep crypto securities registers under the eWpG, as IT-Finanzmagazin reported in November 2025. Before that, banks such as DekaBank and LBBW kept the registers themselves and used SWIAT as the technology underneath.
The consultancy FinPlanet wrote the internal policies for the application, and SWIAT received the license in under twelve months. IT-Finanzmagazin names BayernLB, DekaBank, DZ BANK and LBBW as custodian banks that have worked with SWIAT, which holds an ISO 27001:2022 certificate from TÜV Austria.
SWIAT in the BVeW
SWIAT is one of the partner companies of the Bundesverband für elektronische Wertpapiere, the association of registrars and tokenization firms under the eWpG. The association adopted a technical standard for token-based crypto securities in September 2023, so that other registrars can read tokens from a register they do not run.
Other registrars in the association are e-Sec, a subsidiary of Chartered Investment, and Smart Registry, the register company of NYALA Digital Asset.
SWIAT and Finance Loop
Banks, asset managers and custodians in the Finance Loop network test how bonds and fund units can settle on a blockchain against central bank money. Finance Loop brings their treasury, operations and capital markets teams together with platform operators and registrars, so they can compare pilots that have already settled real issues.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.