Citi Pulls Blockchain Into the Banking Core

Blockchain was created to challenge the assumptions embedded in decades-old financial infrastructure. 

“The technology itself is sound,” Biswarup Chatterjee, global head of partnerships and innovation, Citi Services at Citi, told PYMNTS. “It has operational scale to it.”

Still, for the bulk of its history, blockchain has existed at the edge of the financial system, promising speed, transparency and efficiency while remaining largely disconnected from the operational core of global banks as it continued to move value outside of mainstream channels.

But in a shift driven less by ideology or innovation theater, and more by a fundamental change in how commerce operates, financial blockchain has begun to move from experiment to infrastructure. Markets, after all, no longer pause for holidays, batch windows or regional banking hours. As a result, banks have adapted their financial services to accommodate this always-on reality.

Blockchain’s adoption, however, is not happening in the way early proponents may have once imagined. Rather than replacing traditional financial infrastructure, blockchain is being folded into it.

“What really excited us,” Chatterjee said, “is the fact that we are able to integrate [blockchain] into our operating model … create a 24/7, always-on, on-demand ecosystem for our clients. But the key word is integration.”

Blockchain as Infrastructure Layer for Banking

Chatterjee framed Citi’s approach around a simple but consequential distinction: blockchain as a technology versus blockchain-native instruments. While public attention often gravitates toward assets like cryptocurrencies or stablecoins, Citi’s strategic focus has been more foundational.

“For us it’s about the technology and its benefits, and then the types of instruments,” he said. “We’re very focused more on the technology.

“Here is an ecosystem that is natively digital,” Chatterjee said. “You can get and use structured data out of this ecosystem very efficiently.”

For institutions that spend enormous resources reconciling fragmented information, that shift has implications well beyond payments or settlement. Unlike traditional finance, which still relies heavily on PDFs, emails and manual data extraction, blockchain environments produce standardized, structured digital data by default.

Many of blockchain’s benefits center on attributes that traditional financial systems have historically struggled to deliver at scale. Blockchain networks are inherently always on, eliminating reliance on batch processing and rigid cutoff times. They can support decentralized updates to records while maintaining consistency across participants. 

The technology enables a degree of programmability that can enhance both efficiency and oversight, rather than undermining them.

Building a Global Commerce Infrastructure

The momentum, and even the rationale, behind global finance’s shift toward blockchain can be traced to structural changes in global commerce, many of which accelerated during the pandemic when lockdowns pushed businesses of all sizes toward digital marketplaces and eCommerce platforms that operated continuously and across borders.

“There were no holidays, there were no weekends,” Chatterjee said. “Nothing stopping you from doing business.”

At the same time, supply chains and customer bases have become more global over the past five years, increasing the complexity of payments, liquidity and settlement. The growing mismatch between always-on commerce and time-bound financial services has been thrown into stark relief.  

“We could feel our clients’ need for the financial services, the banking services, payments, liquidity, everything starting to go 24/7,” Chatterjee said, noting that financial blockchain solutions allow liquidity and payments to move at the same pace as commerce itself.

Instead of asking clients to adapt to a new system, Citi has worked to embed blockchain capabilities behind the scenes, allowing clients to access benefits without changing how they interact with the bank.

“The biggest challenge with blockchain technology is that it remains as this mysterious technology,” Chatterjee said.

Too often, it is viewed as a standalone system that requires specialized teams and wholesale reinvention. In practice, that has not been Citi’s experience.

“Blockchain can be integrated into all forms of traditional technology. It can work on scale,” Chatterjee said, pointing to the emergence of common standards and architectures that allow blockchain components to be assembled incrementally.

“We have allowed our clients to stay on our network and connect to us through their preferred traditional method,” he added, “but we have taken the blockchain technology, kept it in-house, and given the benefit to our clients.”

How Interoperability Spurs Innovation

As attention turns to blockchain-based financial instruments like stablecoins, tokenized deposits and tokenized securities, Citi’s priorities again diverge from popular narratives. Rather than betting on a single asset class, the bank is focused on ensuring that different instruments and networks can work together.

“For all of this ecosystem to work, you need interoperability,” Chatterjee said. That includes interoperability between instruments and between networks, as well as secure mechanisms for exchanging information across institutions.

Closely tied to this is wallet infrastructure, which Chatterjee describes as a core component of the system. Wallets are not only where assets are held, but where they are serviced, transferred and returned. As Citi prepares to expand custody services for digital assets, that capability becomes foundational rather than peripheral.

Looking ahead, Chatterjee sees blockchain not as a separate line of business, but as one component of a broader digital transformation that includes data platforms, automation and artificial intelligence.

“We exist to service our clients and to provide a sense of safety, security and control,” he said. 

As clients allocate more capital to tokenized assets or expand into new markets, blockchain capabilities will need to intersect with traditional treasury, payments, custody and trade finance solutions. That approach reflects a broader institutional mindset: Innovation should reduce complexity for clients, not shift it onto them.