Canada’s six largest banks move to tokenize deposits

Canada’s six largest banks said Tuesday (September 22) they will jointly build a tokenized deposit system for the Canadian dollar. It is the first shared blockchain payments project to include all six of the country’s largest lenders, and it puts deposit tokens, not stablecoins, at the center of how regulated Canadian money will move on-chain.

• BMO, CIBC, National Bank, RBC, Scotiabank and TD will start with interbank transfers of tokenized deposits, with other institutions able to join later.
• OSFI said earlier this month that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” so the banks can build under existing rules.
• The project follows Project Samara’s C$100 million tokenized bond pilot in March and the Shopify and National Bank digital dollar push in May.

• 6 banks in the consortium, covering the large majority of Canadian retail and commercial deposits
• C$100M government bond issued and settled on a distributed ledger in Project Samara, completed March 2026
• 17 banks across six continents in SWIFT’s parallel tokenized deposit tests
• 0 technology partners, ledgers or launch dates named in the joint statement

Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group said in a joint statement that the first phase “aims to move tokenized deposits efficiently across Canadian financial institutions with a longer-term goal to connect with other emerging digital assets initiatives.” Other deposit-taking institutions may join at an appropriate time, the banks said.

Together the six hold the large majority of Canadian deposits, which is what separates this from a single-bank pilot. A deposit token that only moves inside one bank is a ledger upgrade. One that settles between all six is a new domestic payment rail.

The banks are tokenizing deposits, not issuing a stablecoin

A tokenized deposit is a digital representation of money already sitting in a customer’s bank account. It stays on the bank’s balance sheet, remains covered by deposit insurance and is subject to the same prudential rules as any other deposit. That distinction matters in Canada, where the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions clarified earlier in September that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” according to The Block.

The practical result is that the banks can build without waiting for new legislation. A stablecoin issued by a non-bank would need its own regulatory perimeter. A deposit token inherits the existing one.

The banks said the system is meant to deliver “faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers while preserving financial stability and regulatory oversight.” No technology vendor, ledger or launch date was named. The statement describes a first phase of interbank transfers, which points to a closed test among the participants before any customer-facing product.

Canada has been building toward this since March

The announcement follows two earlier steps. In March, the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC and TD completed Project Samara, a pilot that issued, traded and settled a C$100 million government bond on a distributed ledger. In May, Shopify and National Bank of Canada backed a regulated digital Canadian dollar for 24/7 settlement, CoinDesk reported.

Tuesday’s statement connects those threads. Tokenized bonds need tokenized cash to settle against, and a merchant-facing digital dollar needs an interbank layer underneath it. The six-bank system is the piece that was missing.

Canada joins a global race among commercial banks

Deposit tokenization has become the preferred route for regulated banks that want on-chain settlement without touching a stablecoin issued by a crypto company. JPMorgan, Citi and Wells Fargo are each building institutional offerings on their own. A group of U.S. regional banks is building a shared tokenized-deposit network on zkSync. SWIFT is testing tokenized deposit transfers with 17 banks across six continents.

The Canadian model is closer to the U.S. regional-bank consortium than to JPMorgan’s single-bank approach, with one difference: the participants here are the incumbents, not the challengers. That removes the network problem most consortium projects run into, where the banks that matter most are the ones that did not sign up.

The BlockWest read. We read this as the strongest signal yet that deposit tokens, not stablecoins, will be how regulated money moves on-chain in G7 banking systems. For allocators, the trade is not a token. It is the infrastructure vendors, custody providers and settlement networks the six banks pick in phase two. For stablecoin issuers eyeing Canada, the door just narrowed.

Three things will show whether this is a working system or a press release: whether the banks name a ledger and a technology partner, and whether that ledger is permissioned or public; whether Payments Canada or the Bank of Canada takes a formal role, which would turn a private consortium into national infrastructure; and whether the “other emerging digital assets initiatives” in the statement includes Project Samara’s tokenized bonds, which would make Canada the first G7 country with tokenized cash and tokenized government debt settling on the same rails.

Reporting from The Block and CoinDesk contributed to this article.

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