Canada's six largest banks are jointly exploring Canadian-dollar digital money, starting with a tokenized deposit initiative whose first phase would move deposit claims between the banks themselves rather than to customers.
Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, The Bank of Nova Scotia and TD Bank Group said in a joint statement published by TD Bank Group on Tuesday, Sept. 22, that 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 they anticipate the inclusion of other deposit-taking institutions "at the appropriate time", and that the work "seeks to deliver faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers while preserving safety, stability, and effective regulatory oversight".
What the group is exploring is not a new currency. A tokenized deposit is a digital representation of money already held at a bank, recorded and transferable on distributed-ledger infrastructure; it is a different instrument from a stablecoin issued by a non-bank company, which is a liability of the issuer rather than a customer deposit. The joint statement nevertheless commits none of the six banks to issuing a tokenized deposit, names no technology provider or ledger, sets no launch date and describes no corporate structure for the collaboration.
The announcement comes twelve days after Canada's banking regulator set out its own position on the same product class. In a statement dated Sept. 10, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said its approach is technology-neutral: "The 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. Tokenized deposits are, for example, not legally distinct from traditional deposits." OSFI added that federally regulated institutions must ensure innovative activities, including those performed by third parties on their behalf, comply with applicable law and guidance such as B-13 on technology and cyber risk management and B-10 on third-party risk management, and should engage their lead supervisors before launching novel products.
Canada's move mirrors a broader race among commercial banks to place deposits on shared infrastructure. US regional lenders are building a shared tokenized-deposit network, while JPMorgan, Citi and Wells Fargo have pursued their own institutional offerings, and Swift has begun testing tokenized deposits for 24/7 cross-border payments with banks across six continents. Canada also has domestic precedents: in March, the Bank of Canada, RBC and TD completed Project Samara, which issued, traded and settled a CAD 100 million (about $71 million) bond on a distributed ledger using tokenized wholesale Canadian dollars; in May, Shopify and National Bank of Canada backed a regulated digital Canadian dollar intended to operate around the clock.
The stakes are about settlement and about where deposits sit. Interbank transfers today rely on batch cycles and correspondent relationships; a shared tokenized deposit ledger is a bet that value can move near-instantly and programmatically while the money remains a claim on a regulated bank inside the supervisory and deposit-protection perimeter. For the lenders, that model preserves the funding base they already hold rather than allowing blockchain-based payments to migrate to non-bank stablecoin issuers. For the regulator, it keeps the activity inside the existing rulebook, which is the logic OSFI's technology-neutral stance supports: the charter and the rules follow the product, not the rails.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. First, this is an intent to explore, not a product: no participant has committed to issuance, and OSFI's statement clarifies legal character rather than granting approval, leaving institutions to engage supervisors product by product. Second, the customer-facing part is explicitly deferred, so claims about cheaper or instant retail payments remain untested at this stage.
Industry reaction has so far come from outside the six banks. Eric Richmond, country director and chief executive of Coinbase Canada, told CoinDesk the collaboration is "encouraging" and "a clear sign that more of the financial system is moving onchain" - a comment worth reading alongside the fact that stablecoin issuers such as Coinbase's partner Circle compete directly with the tokenized-deposit model for the same payment flows.
Open questions the announcement leaves unanswered include which ledger or governance vehicle the banks will use, whether other deposit-takers join beyond the six, and whether the consortium connects to the Bank of Canada's wholesale settlement work built around Project Samara.
Sources
- TD Bank Group, "Six Canadian banks explore development of a secure CAD tokenized deposit solution", 22 September 2026: stories.td.com
- Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, "Statement on Tokenized and Other Digitally Represented Deposits", 10 September 2026: osfi-bsif.gc.ca
- CoinDesk, "Canada's 'Big Six' banks to launch interbank tokenized deposit initiative", 22 September 2026: coindesk.com
