Northern Trust has partnered with Swift to explore the transaction of tokenized carbon credits using a commercial bank account in Australia, as part of Project Acacia, a research initiative led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). This collaboration aims to demonstrate the seamless integration of digital asset innovation with core components of the financial system.
The project will utilize The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem™, a fully digital platform launched in 2024 for the end-to-end lifecycle management of digital carbon credits, which employs private ledger digital blockchain technology. Northern Trust will act as the designated custodian, recording, transferring, and settling digital carbon credits as instructed. The initiative will simulate a delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement between a tokenized digital carbon credit and fiat currency, using Swift’s existing infrastructure to coordinate between the asset and payment layers. The objective is to illustrate how traditional commercial banking infrastructure can support the simultaneous settlement of tokenized assets, marking a key step in demonstrating interoperability between emerging tokenized ecosystems and established financial infrastructure.
Justin Chapman, Group Head of Strategic Partnerships, Digital Assets and Financial Markets at Northern Trust, stated, “The evolution of tokenized markets hinges on our ability to link emerging asset types with traditional infrastructure. By collaborating on Project Acacia, Northern Trust is helping to prove that delivery-versus-payment of tokenized assets is not a future ideal but a present-day reality. Through The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem and engagement with initiatives like this, we aim to shape the market infrastructure that will underpin sustainable finance and institutional digital asset adoption.”
Northern Trust’s involvement in Project Acacia underscores its ongoing commitment to collaborative innovation in digital finance. This follows its participation in other forward-looking initiatives, including Singapore’s Project Guardian, where Northern Trust is piloting a green bond report tokenization solution, and Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble, where it is testing cross-border trading of carbon credits.
Angelo Calvitto, Head of Asia-Pacific at Northern Trust, commented, “This collaboration demonstrates our regional leadership in bringing digital innovation to market. Australia is playing an important role in advancing real-world research, and we’re proud to contribute our expertise to a project that bridges tokenized asset platforms with banking systems in a regulated environment. Our experience across carbon markets, tokenization, and financial services puts us in a strong position to help chart the next phase of market evolution.”
Kevin Wong, Chief Executive APAC at Swift, added, “The ability to integrate tokenized assets with existing financial infrastructure is critical to unlocking their full potential. This initiative demonstrates how Swift’s infrastructure can support the adoption of digital assets such as carbon credits in a delivery-versus-payment model. By enabling interoperability between existing banking infrastructures and emerging digital ecosystems, we’re helping to lay the groundwork for scalable, secure, and sustainable adoption of tokenized finance across the globe.”
Project Acacia is a research project led by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) aimed at exploring how different forms of digital money and associated infrastructure could support the development of wholesale tokenized asset markets in Australia. The Northern Trust Carbon Ecosystem is offered through The Northern Trust Company, Chicago.
