FAB Becomes the First Bank in the Middle East and Africa to Complete Live US Dollar Transactions With Citi Using Tokenised Deposits on Swift Ledger

2026-09-02

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) has completed live US dollar transactions with Citi using tokenised bank deposits on Swift Ledger, the blockchain-based shared ledger that Swift is building for 24/7 cross-border payments. The transactions were carried out within Swift’s Ledger Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and FAB says it is the first bank in the Middle East and Africa to reach this stage of the initiative; the news was reported by Gulf News on 2026-09-02. The deposits stayed on the balance sheets of the two banks, Swift Ledger recorded and coordinated their payment commitments without holding any funds, and final settlement went through established correspondent banking channels. FAB, the largest bank in the UAE with total assets of AED 1.41 trillion at the end of June 2026, will continue with Swift and the other participating institutions into the next phases, which are expected to bring greater connectivity between systems, 24/7 cross-border settlement and programmable treasury services for corporate and institutional clients.

What FAB and Citi actually did

According to the bank’s statement reported by Gulf News, the test brought together three components in one live transaction: Swift’s existing payment messaging network, tokenised deposits issued by the two banks, and distributed ledger technology. Tokenised deposits are digital representations of money that already sits in bank accounts. In the FAB and Citi transactions the deposits remained on the participating banks’ balance sheets rather than being converted into a separate digital asset, which is the key difference between this model and a stablecoin or a cryptocurrency.

Swift Ledger coordinated the payment commitments between the two banks and recorded the amounts they owed each other. It did not hold or take custody of the funds. The final settlement between FAB and Citi took place separately through correspondent banking, so both banks kept their existing systems for managing liquidity, risk and settlement while testing the new layer on top. FAB said the transactions also tested how regulated commercial bank deposits can support faster and programmable international payments that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

How Swift Ledger was built: from Sibos 2025 to live transactions

Swift announced on 2025-09-29, at the Sibos conference in Frankfurt, that it would add a blockchain-based shared ledger to its infrastructure, working with more than 30 banks and building an early prototype with Consensys. By the end of March 2026 the design phase was complete, with more than 40 financial institutions involved, and Swift moved to construction of the first MVP with the aim of running real transactions before the end of 2026. On 2026-07-09 Swift declared the ledger ready for initial use, nine months after the announcement, and named 17 banks from six continents that would pilot live transactions: ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand Bank, HSBC, Itau Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, Mashreq, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB and Wells Fargo. Two of the 17 are UAE banks: FAB and Mashreq.

Swift describes the ledger as an orchestration layer rather than a payment system in its own right. Tokenised deposits are issued on each bank’s own ledger, the shared ledger records and validates the banks’ commitments to one another, and client funds can move around the clock, including overnight and on weekends, before final settlement through existing rails such as real-time gross settlement systems or correspondent accounts. The platform runs on Besu, an open-source Ethereum-compatible framework. Swift’s network today connects more than 200 countries and territories, and the cooperative says 75% of its payments reach the beneficiary bank within 10 minutes; the ledger is meant to extend that reach to always-on, programmable money movement without replacing the underlying settlement infrastructure.

Why Citi, and why US dollars

Citi announced 24/7 US dollar clearing for its financial institution clients in 2022 and in 2025 integrated it with Citi Token Services, its own tokenised deposit platform, for real-time cross-border payments and liquidity management. Debopama Sen, Head of Payments in Citi’s Services division, said at the launch of Swift’s ledger in July 2026 that it represents an important step towards always-on payments and liquidity. For a UAE bank, the US dollar is the natural currency for the first live test: the dirham is pegged to the US dollar, and dollar payments from the Gulf currently depend on US clearing hours and on the difference between the UAE weekend (Saturday and Sunday) and the days on which US dollar settlement systems are open.

What changes for a company in the UAE

Nothing changes in day-to-day banking today: the FAB and Citi transactions were bank-to-bank tests inside an MVP, and corporate clients continue to send international payments through their usual online banking channels, cut-off times and correspondent routes. The direction of travel, however, is now concrete. FAB said the next phases are expected to include greater connectivity between different tokenised money systems, 24/7 cross-border settlement capabilities and programmable treasury services for corporate and institutional clients. In practice that points to three things a finance team in Dubai or Abu Dhabi can expect over time:

• Payments outside banking hours. A US dollar payment released on a Friday afternoon in the UAE, or on a US public holiday, could be committed and reflected between banks immediately instead of waiting for the next settlement window.
• Visibility of obligations. Because the shared ledger records commitments as they are made, both banks see the same status of a payment, which shortens investigations and reconciliation.
• Programmable treasury. Conditional payments, automatic sweeps and releases tied to events such as delivery confirmation become possible when the money is a tokenised deposit on a regulated bank ledger rather than a message in a queue. FAB has already tested programmable payments with Onyx by J.P. Morgan in September 2024.

The model matters for regulated businesses because it keeps money inside the banking system. Funds never leave the bank’s balance sheet, deposit protection and existing anti-money-laundering controls apply, and there is no separate crypto asset that a company’s accountant or auditor has to value. That is different from paying with a stablecoin, and it is also different from the tax treatment of digital currencies that the Federal Tax Authority has set out for VAT purposes; our article on UAE VAT and the conversion of digital currency into dirhams explains those rules.

The UAE banking context

FAB reported operating income of AED 19.50 billion for the first half of 2026, up 7% year on year, profit before tax of AED 13.20 billion and net profit of AED 10.73 billion, with loans of AED 661 billion and customer deposits of AED 853 billion. The bank holds AA- ratings from Moody’s, Fitch and S&P, the highest of any banking group in the Middle East and North Africa. In June 2025 it became the first bank in the region to join China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) as a direct participant, and in August 2026 its Payit wallet added a Send Now Pay Later option for international transfers. The sector as a whole is in a strong position: UAE banks earned a record AED 90.8 billion in 2025 with assets of AED 5.3 trillion, and the Central Bank of the UAE is running its Financial Infrastructure Transformation programme, which has already delivered the Aani instant payments platform and the Jaywan domestic card scheme and includes the Digital Dirham, the central bank digital currency whose first cross-border payment on the mBridge platform was made in January 2024.

For international companies choosing where to bank in the UAE, participation in the Swift pilot is one more data point alongside product launches such as HSBC’s multi-currency account with one IBAN. Two UAE banks, FAB and Mashreq, are in the group of 17 that will run the first live tokenised deposit payments, which means that the always-on dollar corridor between the UAE and the United States is likely to be available to corporate clients of those banks first.

Checklist: how to prepare your company’s payments for 24/7 rails

• Open or maintain a corporate account at a UAE bank that participates in Swift’s ledger pilot if US dollar payments outside banking hours matter to your business; FAB and Mashreq are the two UAE names in the current cohort.
• Hold a US dollar sub-account alongside the AED account so that dollar payments do not require a conversion step at the moment of release.
• Keep the account documentation current: trade licence, ultimate beneficial owner details, source of funds and counterparties. Tokenised deposits do not change the compliance checks that a bank runs before releasing a payment.
• Map your recurring international payments by currency, counterparty bank and day of the week to see which flows would benefit from weekend or after-hours settlement.
• Ask your relationship manager whether the bank plans to offer 24/7 US dollar settlement or programmable treasury services to corporate clients and what onboarding will require.
• Do not confuse tokenised deposits with stablecoins in your accounting: a tokenised deposit is a bank deposit and is booked as cash at bank.

How Atlant Capital can help

Faster settlement rails only help a company that already has a working banking relationship in the UAE. We assist foreign founders and companies with company formation in a free zone or on the mainland, with the choice of licensed activities that banks accept, and with corporate bank account opening, including the preparation of the business profile, source of funds documentation and counterparty descriptions that compliance teams ask for. If your business runs regular US dollar flows with suppliers or customers in the United States, Asia or Europe, we can help you structure the accounts and documents so that new services such as 24/7 settlement are available to you as banks roll them out.

Conclusion

FAB’s live US dollar transactions with Citi on Swift Ledger are a small step in volume and a large one in structure: the first tokenised deposit payments on Swift’s shared ledger involving a bank from the Middle East and Africa, completed within an MVP that 17 banks are piloting since July 2026. The money stayed inside the banking system, settlement went through existing correspondent channels, and the new layer added round-the-clock coordination of commitments. For companies in the UAE the practical effects, 24/7 dollar settlement and programmable treasury services, will arrive through their banks in the next phases of the initiative; the sensible preparation is a properly documented corporate account at a bank that is already in the pilot.

FAQ

What did FAB and Citi actually do on Swift Ledger?

First Abu Dhabi Bank completed live US dollar transactions with Citi using tokenised deposits within Swift’s Ledger Minimum Viable Product, as reported by Gulf News on 2026-09-02. The deposits stayed on the two banks’ balance sheets, Swift Ledger recorded and coordinated the payment commitments without holding any funds, and final settlement went through established correspondent banking channels. FAB says it is the first bank in the Middle East and Africa to reach this stage.

What is a tokenised deposit and how is it different from a stablecoin?

A tokenised deposit is a digital representation of money that already sits in a bank account; the deposit remains on the bank’s balance sheet and keeps its regulatory protections. A stablecoin is a separate digital asset issued by a company and backed by reserves held outside the paying bank. In the FAB and Citi transactions no separate digital asset was created, so from the client’s point of view the money never left the banking system.

Does this change how a UAE company sends US dollar payments today?

Not yet. The transactions were bank-to-bank tests inside an MVP, and corporate clients continue to use their normal online banking channels, cut-off times and correspondent routes. FAB said the next phases are expected to include 24/7 cross-border settlement and programmable treasury services for corporate and institutional clients, so companies with regular dollar flows should ask their bank about onboarding when those services are offered.

Which UAE banks are part of Swift’s tokenised deposit pilot?

Two: First Abu Dhabi Bank and Mashreq. They are among the 17 banks from six continents named by Swift on 2026-07-09 to pilot live transactions on the ledger, alongside ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, FirstRand Bank, HSBC, Itau Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB and Wells Fargo.