Canada's Big Six Banks Plan a Shared Tokenized Deposit System

Canada's six largest banks will build a shared system for moving tokenized Canadian-dollar deposits between them. Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group announced the work on Tuesday. The first phase covers transfers between the banks, not payments made by their customers. No ledger has been named and no test has been dated. A tokenized deposit is an ordinary bank deposit recorded as a token, so the money stays a liability of the bank holding it.

What the first phase covers

The joint statement runs to a few lines, and every outlet that carried it quoted the same one.

"The first phase of the project aims to move tokenized deposits efficiently across Canadian financial institutions with a longer-term goal to connect with other emerging digital assets initiatives," the banks said.

A second sentence gives the purpose: "faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers while preserving safety, stability, and effective regulatory oversight," in the version crypto.news published. CoinDesk's rendering of that sentence reads "financial stability and regulatory oversight." The two do not match word for word, and neither outlet carried the statement in full. The Block reported that other deposit-taking institutions may join "at an appropriate time." KuCoin's wire said more banks are expected to. Neither names one.

A deposit, not a stablecoin

The difference decides who carries the risk. Each token stands for money already sitting at one of the participating banks, and its value remains recorded as that bank's liability, crypto.news and The Crypto Times both explain. A stablecoin is issued separately, against its own reserves. Canada has one of those already, Tetra Trust's CADD, approved in May 2026, by The Crypto Times' account. The six banks are not putting a rival token into the market. They are moving deposits they already hold onto rails that run on a ledger.

The regulator went first

The announcement came 12 days after the country's bank regulator settled the legal question, by Crypto Briefing's count. On 10 September the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said tokenized deposits are not legally distinct from ordinary deposits, and that the technology used to create or deliver a financial product does not determine its legal classification. Compliance, cybersecurity and risk obligations carry over unchanged. Crypto Briefing reads that clarification as what let six competitors put their names to one project.

The plumbing has been tested in Canada before. Project Samara, completed in March 2026, took a bond through issuance, trading and settlement on a distributed ledger, with the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC and TD taking part. KuCoin's flash sizes that test at C$100 million and names only RBC and TD among the banks. We found that figure in no other account.

Nothing dated yet

A comparable American effort is under way, and the reports of it disagree. crypto.news names JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, working toward the first half of 2027. KuCoin names JPMorgan, Citibank and Wells Fargo, with no Bank of America and no date. The two lists do not reconcile. Those banks went public in June with a shared tokenized-deposit network of their own.

What the Canadian group has published is a list of six names and a first phase. The platform, the governance, the pricing and the timing are all absent, and the project has no public name. CoinDesk, Crypto Briefing and the KuCoin wire carried it on Tuesday; The Block's report is datelined after midnight New York time on Wednesday. Until a platform or a test date appears, there is nothing to measure the plan against.