Easy to integrate, compliant by design: Bringing the Swiss Franc to Google Cloud Universal Ledger

Conventional payment systems often slow or block transactions, prompting interest in public stablecoins like Tether and USDC for speed and 24/7 settlement. However, regulated banks avoid these due to regulatory uncertainty, capital requirements, and risks to lending reserves, leaving them without a compliant way to adopt blockchain-based payments. Google Cloud’s Universal Ledger (GCUL) addresses this by providing secure infrastructure for banks to issue and settle tokenized deposits, combining real-time payments with regulatory compliance and minimal disruption to existing operations.

Switzerland’s Crypto Finance Group piloted GCUL to demonstrate how banks can modernize payments in weeks, enabling instant account-to-account transfers between two Swiss banks within a stringent financial security framework. The pilot established a rulebook for interbank settlement, integration with traditional payment rails, and compliance protocols, proving that automated cross-institution integration is feasible and scalable across asset classes.

GCUL’s enterprise-grade consensus model and Google Cloud’s redundancy ensure reliability for live transactions, meeting banks’ demands for security, encryption, and regulatory compliance. The pilot integrated core banking systems with GCUL via dedicated APIs, using components like a role admin service, settlement registry, and cloud key management, while allowing banks to connect via RPC from on-premise systems without requiring large cloud footprints.

To join the Swiss Franc currency network on GCUL, participants must hold regulatory licenses for third-party transfers and commercial bank money issuance. The currency operator, such as Crypto Finance, defines fees, limits, settlement times, and technical configurations through a rulebook, ensuring standardization while allowing flexibility in token and account management based on institutional needs.