{"id":906443,"date":"2026-09-23T09:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T09:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/906443\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T09:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T09:56:16","slug":"canadas-big-six-banks-working-on-tokenized-deposits-in-latest-digital-money-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/906443\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s Big Six banks working on tokenized deposits in latest digital money push"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The tokenized deposits could serve as an alternative to Canada\u2019s Real-Time Rail payment system, expert says.Gary Hershorn\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s six biggest banks are working together to develop tokenized deposits as part of an initiative meant to keep pace with global developments in digital money.<\/p>\n

Tokenized deposits are digital representations of traditional bank deposits, recorded on a blockchain or a distributed ledger.<\/p>\n

Royal Bank of Canada RY-T<\/a>, Toronto-Dominion Bank TD-T<\/a>, Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T<\/a>, Bank of Montreal BMO-T<\/a>, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T<\/a> and National Bank of Canada NA-T<\/a> announced the initiative in a joint press release Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The announcement follows the passing of Canada\u2019s Stablecoin Act<\/a>, which received royal assent in March and created the necessary regulatory framework, and similar developments south of the border. The largest U.S. banks are working to launch a tokenized deposit network next year, and JPMorgan Chase JPM-N<\/a> has started offering a deposit token called JPM Coin to its institutional clients.<\/p>\n

The Canadian government has been pushing to strengthen the country\u2019s economic sovereignty in response to escalating tensions with its largest trading partner, the United States.<\/p>\n

The first phase of the joint project announced Tuesday will involve moving tokenized deposits denominated in Canadian dollars between financial institutions. Experts said the technology can speed up bank-to-bank settlements by using a shared blockchain. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an efficient way for the banks to settle amongst themselves,\u201d said Todd Roberts, senior partner of national payments and market infrastructure at Deloitte Canada.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Why Canada needs a digital dollar<\/a><\/p>\n

The lenders said their longer term goal is to \u201cconnect with other emerging digital assets initiatives,\u201d but did not specify which ones.<\/p>\n

BMO, RBC, CIBC, TD Bank and Scotiabank all declined to comment further on the project, while National did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, said in a statement earlier this month<\/a> that tokenized deposits are \u201cnot legally distinct from traditional deposits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe underlying technology of a financial product or service does not determine its legal nature. To be clear, we focus on what the product or service is, not how it is built or delivered,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

Cristi\u00e1n Bravo, professor and Canada Research Chair in Banking and Insurance Analytics at Western University, said tokenized deposits differ from stablecoins, which are virtual currencies pegged to more stable assets like the U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n

\u201cA tokenized deposit is a bank deposit, so it\u2019s protected by all the legislation that supports what banks can do with deposits,\u201d Prof. Bravo said. <\/p>\n

The key difference between a tokenized deposit and a regular deposit is that \u201cthere will be a blockchain tied to that deposit that will be able to settle automatically,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Prof. Bravo said tokenized deposits could serve as an alternative to Canada\u2019s Real-Time Rail payment system, a network that will send and receive payments instantly, which has faced delays. <\/p>\n

Canadian financial institutions have only started to dabble in digital assets recently. <\/p>\n

Opinion: The era of blind pursuit of stability over growth in Canadian banking is finally ending<\/a><\/p>\n

In May, BMO announced that it hired Imran Ibrahim, the former head of cross-border payment products and new initiatives at CIBC, to a newly created role<\/a> leading its digital assets and tokenization strategy.<\/p>\n

And Wealthsimple Financial Corp.<\/a> and Visa Canada V-N<\/a> recently experimented with<\/a> using stablecoin to settle payments more quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a bit of an arms race to ensure that major currencies are present in digital tokenized form,\u201d Deloitte\u2019s Mr. Roberts said.<\/p>\n

He believes that having a tokenized form of the Canadian dollar is important for the country\u2019s monetary sovereignty. Otherwise, demand for tokenized deposits will go elsewhere \u2013 for instance, to U.S.-dollar digital assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability to have an interchangeable digital fiat within Canada, and over time looking at exchanging our digital fiat with other nations\u2019 digital fiat, is an important part of how we reinforce our sovereignty,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The tokenized deposits could serve as an alternative to Canada\u2019s Real-Time Rail payment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,43,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,41,39,42,40,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-906443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}