Canada's Big Six Banks Explore Tokenized Canadian-Dollar Deposits

Canada's six largest banks are jointly exploring tokenized Canadian-dollar deposits, a move toward on-chain payments within the country's regulated banking system.

Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and TD Bank Group said the first phase will test the movement of tokenized deposits between Canadian financial institutions. According to CoinDesk, initial testing will focus on moving digital commercial deposits across participating institutions before connecting to broader digital asset ecosystems.

Tokenized deposits are digital versions of funds held at regulated banks, as opposed to privately issued stablecoins. The banks said the project aims to enable faster, more efficient, and programmable payments while keeping funds within the regulated banking system. They added that the initiative could eventually link with other digital-asset systems and may later include additional deposit-taking institutions.