Finance · updated 1h ago · 2 min read
Canada’s Big Six Banks Form Joint Venture To Explore Tokenized Canadian-Dollar Deposits
Canada’s Big Six banks form joint tokenized CAD deposit initiative. Initial tests focus on moving digital commercial deposits between participating banks.
Whether the regulator clarification is central to the story’s timing.
10 of 12 outlets skipped it: initiative may connect with other digital assets.
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Cointelegraph
“The project comes less than two weeks after regulators clarified how they should be treated.”Read the original ↗
Financial Times
“This project is exploring tokenized deposit solutions to drive responsible innovation and facilitate broad participation in the digital money ecosystem for the benefit of all Canadians.”Read the original ↗
Cointelegraph ties the initiative to OSFI timing; the FT presses more on policy and purpose.
Big Six Tokenize Deposits
Canada’s six largest banks, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and TD Bank Group, formed a joint venture to explore a Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system. The banks said the project’s first phase would test transfers of tokenized deposits, described as “digital representations of actual deposits held at banks,” between participating institutions.
The banks framed the longer-term goal as connecting the system to “other emerging digital asset initiatives,” while keeping customer funds within the regulated banking system. The banks also said the initiative could support “faster, programmable, around-the-clock payments” while preserving financial stability and regulatory oversight.
Regulatory Clarity and Scope
The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” and the banks’ initiative arrived after that clarification. Cointelegraph described OSFI’s position that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” adding that the underlying technology of a financial product does not determine its legal nature.C
The banks said the first phase would focus on moving tokenized deposits between Canadian financial institutions before potentially connecting to other digital asset systems. The banks also said the project has not yet reached the stage of committing lenders to issuing a tokenized deposit, even as they explored a shared model for digital money.
Payments Use Case and Pilots
The banks said the system is intended to support faster, more efficient, and programmable payments to Canadian customers while maintaining “financial stability and regulatory oversight.” CoinDesk tied the initiative to Canada’s broader tokenized financial markets work, including Project Samara, where the Bank of Canada, RBC, and TD completed a pilot that issued, traded, and settled a 100 million Canadian dollar bond on a distributed ledger.
CoinDesk also said Canada is developing a domestic stablecoin market, and it referenced a May effort in which Shopify and the National Bank of Canada backed a regulated digital Canadian dollar intended to operate around the clock. The banks said the joint project could enable Canadian banks to test 24/7 programmable payments while keeping customer funds within the regulated banking system, starting with interbank transfers among the Big Six.