Chainlink Pushes Banking Into Blockchain: UBS Pilot, Global Partnerships, and LINK’s Road Ahead

Chainlink, the blockchain industry’s leading oracle platform, is steadily reshaping the way banks and financial institutions interact with digital assets. Often described as the “industry standard” for connecting blockchains to real-world data, Chainlink has in recent months intensified its efforts to help traditional finance adopt tokenized assets more seamlessly.

Its latest announcement — a pilot with UBS Tokenize, the in-house tokenization unit of UBS — underscores how the company’s technology is becoming a bridge between legacy financial infrastructure and emerging blockchain ecosystems. The project highlights the potential to simplify workflows, cut inefficiencies, and open new doors for the $100 trillion global asset management industry.

UBS and Chainlink Test Tokenized Funds

In a press release this week, Chainlink revealed that it has rolled out a new plug-and-play solution that allows financial institutions to manage blockchain-based assets without overhauling their existing systems.

We’re excited to announce a landmark technical solution enabling financial institutions worldwide to manage digital asset workflows directly from their existing systems using Swift (@swiftcommunity) messaging and Chainlink in collaboration with @UBS.https://t.co/W1fq1guro4… pic.twitter.com/0uBUl2K4tk

— Chainlink (@chainlink) September 30, 2025

The innovation combines the familiar Swift messaging framework with Chainlink’s Runtime Environment (CRE). This allows institutions to process blockchain workflows directly within Swift — a system that already underpins the global financial industry. Banks can now access digital assets without having to install new infrastructure, change core processes, or add additional identity and key management tools.

The pilot was conducted with UBS Tokenize, the Swiss bank’s tokenization platform. In this test, subscriptions and redemptions for a UBS tokenized fund were initiated using ISO 20022 messages via Swift, then routed through CRE. The CRE environment automatically triggered fund workflows inside Chainlink’s Digital Transfer Agent (DTA) — a tool designed to execute smart contract–based fund lifecycle events.

The result: a demonstration of how tokenized fund management can work smoothly using the same pipes banks already rely on for traditional assets.

Why This Matters

For banks, asset managers, and custodians, the challenge of adopting blockchain has always been integration. Traditional systems run on Swift and other well-established networks, while blockchain infrastructure often requires separate tools and processes. Chainlink’s CRE solution addresses this by creating a unified layer where both worlds can meet.

Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, stressed the broader implications:

“UBS is demonstrating how the use of smart contract-based technologies can be used by financial institutions to more readily explore new types of product lifecycle composability,” he said.

In simpler terms, it means banks may soon be able to issue, redeem, and manage tokenized assets as easily as they do traditional ones — all without ripping out their existing systems.

Building on Project Guardian

This pilot builds on the momentum of Project Guardian, a 2024 collaboration between Swift, Chainlink, UBS, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). That project showed how tokenized fund subscriptions and redemptions could be settled using off-chain cash transactions routed through Swift.

The difference now is that Chainlink has taken the concept further, packaging it into a ready-to-use solution. If widely adopted, the impact could be profound: Chainlink believes its new framework could help transform how the $100+ trillion global fund industry operates.

Tackling the $58 Billion Corporate Actions Problem

Beyond tokenized funds, Chainlink is also moving aggressively into another high-impact space: corporate actions. Corporate actions include dividends, stock splits, mergers, and acquisitions — events that financial institutions must process accurately across global markets. Errors and inefficiencies in this area are costly, with an estimated $58 billion at stake annually.

To address this, Chainlink recently unveiled a global corporate actions initiative in partnership with 24 of the world’s largest financial institutions. The plan is to use AI, blockchain technology, and Chainlink’s oracle infrastructure to bring greater automation, security, and transparency to how corporate actions are recorded and executed.

If successful, this initiative could eliminate costly delays, reduce operational risks, and create a standardized global process for actions that currently rely on fragmented and sometimes outdated infrastructure.

Why Banks Are Paying Attention

The global financial sector has long debated how blockchain could streamline operations, but concrete progress has been slow. Chainlink’s approach — embedding blockchain capabilities into the existing systems banks already use — is winning attention precisely because it avoids disruption.

Tokenization of assets is seen as one of the most promising applications of blockchain. From money market funds to real estate, tokenized products could make traditionally illiquid assets more accessible, improve settlement times, and cut down on costs. However, adoption has been limited by concerns around integration, compliance, and scalability.

By working directly with Swift and major banks like UBS, Chainlink is positioning itself as the key infrastructure provider to solve these challenges.

Market Impact and LINK Price Outlook

Chainlink’s progress is not just theoretical — it is beginning to influence market sentiment around its native token, LINK. As of today, LINK is trading at $21.45, up 1.22% in the last 24 hours.

Crypto analyst Ali Martinez noted that if LINK continues to hold its support level at $20, it could climb toward $47 in the coming months. The reasoning is clear: as more banks adopt Chainlink’s solutions and real-world use cases expand, demand for its services — and by extension, its token — may grow substantially.

See what leaders from Chainlink, DTCC, Euroclear, and Wellington Management are saying about Chainlink's major industry initiative to solve the $58 billion annual corporate actions problem ↓

— Chainlink (@chainlink) September 29, 2025

Chainlink has a history of performing well in bullish markets when adoption stories begin to dominate headlines. With partnerships ranging from financial giants like UBS to tech players exploring AI integrations, many see Chainlink as one of the few blockchain projects with both utility and staying power.

A Quiet Revolution in Finance

The significance of these pilots goes beyond crypto speculation. They suggest that blockchain’s entry into traditional finance is happening in a quieter, more incremental way than some early enthusiasts imagined. Instead of a wholesale replacement of systems, platforms like Chainlink are showing how legacy infrastructure can adapt by layering blockchain capabilities on top of existing rails.

For the financial sector, this may be the most realistic path forward: evolution rather than revolution. For Chainlink, it represents validation of its vision as the middleware of the blockchain economy — the invisible layer connecting traditional systems with decentralized networks.

What Comes Next

With its new plug-and-play solution live, Chainlink is expected to expand pilots beyond UBS to other major banks and asset managers. The company’s global corporate actions initiative, meanwhile, could prove to be one of its most significant ventures yet, given the enormous scale of inefficiencies it seeks to address.

For investors, the message is clear: Chainlink is not just another blockchain experiment. It is positioning itself as core infrastructure for the next era of finance — where tokenized assets and blockchain-based processes operate alongside traditional markets, not in isolation.

Final Thoughts

Chainlink’s work with UBS and Swift illustrates how blockchain can be integrated into finance without disrupting decades-old infrastructure. By bridging the gap between legacy systems and decentralized technologies, it is paving the way for more efficient, transparent, and accessible markets.

If these pilots gain traction, they could mark the beginning of a larger shift: one where tokenized funds, corporate actions, and other financial processes move seamlessly onto blockchain rails. And for Chainlink, that could mean not only stronger adoption but also a more prominent role in shaping the future of global finance.

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