Chainlink Expands Banking Reach With Major SWIFT Provider

Chainlink has partnered with payments technology provider Bottomline to connect traditional banking infrastructure with public and private blockchains, potentially opening an onchain pathway for hundreds of financial institutions.

The announcement helped push Chainlink's LINK token to around $11.88 on September 4, representing a roughly 6.8% increase over the previous 24 hours.

Bottomline says approximately 15% of international cross-border transactions conducted through SWIFT pass through its platform, which handles more than $16 trillion in payments annually. Its SWIFT connectivity business serves close to 600 banking clients.

However, those figures represent Bottomline's existing payment infrastructure rather than transactions already moving through Chainlink. The collaboration remains at an early stage, and neither company has indicated that Bottomline's $16 trillion annual payment volume will move onchain.

Bottomline Opens a Large Banking Distribution Channel

Owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, Bottomline provides payment technology to more than one million financial institutions and businesses across 92 countries.

Its SWIFT connectivity division reportedly processes around 10 million payments and transactions daily and ranks among the world's largest SWIFT service bureaus.

That reach potentially gives Chainlink a broader distribution channel than several of its existing institutional blockchain initiatives.

The DTCC, for example, has used the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) in work involving collateral management, while Project Pangea has brought together dozens of European and Korean banks to explore faster foreign exchange settlement.

Bottomline could instead provide a route for institutions already using established payment infrastructure to add blockchain settlement without replacing their existing banking systems.

Banks Can Keep Their Existing Payment Messages

A central part of the integration is designed around ISO 20022, the messaging standard increasingly used throughout international banking.

Banks could continue submitting familiar ISO 20022 payment instructions while Chainlink's infrastructure coordinates their interaction with blockchain networks.

The Chainlink Runtime Environment would orchestrate the workflow, while the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) would provide connectivity between different public and private blockchains.

SWIFT reported that adoption of ISO 20022 for cross-border payment instructions reached 97% following the November 2025 migration.

Instead of requiring another costly core-system overhaul, the Bottomline integration could allow blockchain settlement to become another destination for payment instructions already generated by banks.

Cross-Border Payments Create Major Opportunity

The partnership arrives as financial institutions invest heavily in modernizing global payment infrastructure.

J.P. Morgan has projected that global cross-border payments could grow from $194 trillion in 2024 to $320 trillion by 2032, while a large majority of financial institutions are already upgrading their payment systems.

Meanwhile, the Bank for International Settlements' Project Agorá has explored tokenized central-bank reserves and commercial-bank deposits for wholesale cross-border settlement.

Interoperability remains a major challenge because banks may ultimately use several forms of tokenized money, including stablecoins, tokenized deposits and potentially central bank digital currencies.

Bottomline Global Head of Product for Corporate Solutions Colin Swain previously highlighted the operational hurdle:

The partnership therefore focuses not simply on faster transactions, but on connecting blockchain networks with financial processes institutions already understand and use.

LINK Rises as Institutional Adoption Expands

Following the announcement, LINK traded around $11.88, still approximately 77.5% below its historical peak of $52.88. Around 748 million LINK were reportedly circulating from a maximum supply of one billion.

Chainlink's broader institutional footprint is also expanding. Charles Schwab recently confirmed plans to support LINK alongside SOL and AVAX through Schwab Crypto, while Chainlink continues working on institutional tokenization and settlement initiatives.

Chainlink's Payment Abstraction system can convert payments for certain Chainlink services into LINK, while the network's reserve holds millions of tokens.

Still, Bottomline's existing transaction volume should not be interpreted as automatic LINK demand. Neither company has disclosed which banks will participate, expected production volumes, fees or a timeline for large-scale deployment.

The significance is therefore the potential distribution channel: Chainlink could gain access to infrastructure already connecting hundreds of banks.

The key test will be whether Bottomline's banking clients move beyond proofs of concept and begin settling meaningful transaction volumes through blockchain networks.