Head of SWIFT East Asia: Stablecoins will not disrupt the existing financial system, their core is to serve specific customer groups and scenarios

According to a report by Golden Finance Live, at the WeX2025 event held in Japan on August 26, Mitsuru Kayahana, head of SWIFT East Asia, pointed out that stablecoins, as a form of digital currency, will not significantly change the existing financial system. Its core value lies in serving specific customer groups and scenarios. As long as banks remain intermediaries and service providers, traditional cross-border transfer processes (such as SWIFT's messaging system and correspondent banking model) will coexist with new payment instruments such as stablecoins for a long time.
He believes that in the future, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), private stablecoins, and tokenized deposits will be diverse and symbiotic, and SWIFT will build a bridge of interoperability with standardized message formats to prevent the fragmentation of the financial ecosystem. Currently, SWIFT is working with institutions in East Asia such as Japan and South Korea to explore the compliance application of stablecoins in cross-border transactions. In the future, SWIFT will continue to maintain "currency, platform, and net neutrality", open access to all regulated and security-compliant networks, and promote the global financial infrastructure from "fragmentation" to "interoperability". SWIFT's core goal is to ensure the seamless flow of different forms of digital assets (CBDCs, stablecoins, etc.) and traditional currencies, ultimately improving the efficiency and inclusiveness of the global financial system.