Swiss financial infrastructure — FINMA's proportionate DLT regime, SDX's operational maturity, the SIX settlement rails, and a deep bench of regulated stablecoin issuers — positions Zurich and the broader Swiss ecosystem to play a distinctive role in the cross-border settlement architecture that is emerging as correspondent banking compresses. This report surveys the infrastructure, compares it to other candidates (Singapore, Luxembourg, Abu Dhabi), and argues that Swiss infrastructure has specific advantages in multi-currency tokenised settlement that are not yet widely recognised.
- 01The Swiss DLT Act (2021) remains, four years on, the most operationally mature national framework for DLT-based financial market infrastructure, with a cumulative issuance base that exceeds most comparable jurisdictions.
- 02SDX has processed settlement for tokenised bonds and equities at institutional volume continuously since 2021, building operational knowledge that is difficult to replicate.
- 03The Swiss stablecoin bench — CHF-denominated and multi-currency — is the deepest outside the US dollar, and FINMA's proportionate regime has attracted issuers who would struggle under MiCA's Art. 44 reserve requirements.
- 04The distinctive advantage is multi-currency: Switzerland sits at the intersection of CHF, EUR, USD, and (via established private-banking relationships) GCC currencies, and is unusually well positioned to operate as a multi-currency clearing surface for tokenised assets.
1. Infrastructure, slowly accreted
Swiss financial infrastructure has accreted over decades. FINMA's supervisory approach has been proportionate since long before the DLT Act, the SIX rails handle settlement volume that is large relative to GDP, and the regulated-stablecoin bench emerged quietly between 2019 and 2024.
None of these components is individually decisive. Taken together they form an operational stack that is difficult to reproduce by fiat. The Swiss advantage in this domain is institutional rather than technological, and institutional advantages are slow to build and slow to lose.
2. What Zurich does well
Zurich does multi-currency well. It handles CHF, EUR, and USD as first-class citizens in the same institution, the same payment rails, and frequently the same wallet. It handles legacy correspondent banking, modern stablecoin rails, and traditional securities settlement in the same operational culture.
This is not universally true of competing jurisdictions. Singapore is USD-SGD-dominant. Luxembourg is EUR-dominant. Abu Dhabi is USD-AED-dominant. Zurich's structural multi-currency position — reinforced by a deep private-banking tradition with GCC and Asian counterparties — is distinctive.
3. The clearing role
As correspondent banking compresses, someone has to play the clearing role for cross-currency tokenised settlement. The role does not require custody; it requires standing as a neutral, regulated, multi-currency-fluent counterparty at the centre of the settlement graph.
Swiss infrastructure is unusually well suited to this role. Whether it will actually occupy the role depends less on capability than on commercial positioning and regulatory posture. We offer recommendations for both.
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Boli Association. (2026). Zurich as a settlement hub in the post-correspondent era. Boli Association Research Report No. BA-2026-07. Zurich.