Canada's Big Six joint tokenized deposit initiative

In late September 2026, Canada’s six largest banks — Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group — announced a joint initiative to explore a Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system. The project’s first phase concentrates on enabling efficient transfers of tokenized deposits among participating banks, with longer-term ambitions to support programmability and interoperability with other bank-led digital-asset programs.

The banks emphasize that tokenized deposits remain liabilities of the issuing bank, insured and subject to prudential regulation, distinguishing them from fiat-backed stablecoins that are separately issued tokens backed by reserves. The initiative followed a regulatory clarification: on Sept. 10 the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) stated tokenized deposits are not legally distinct from traditional deposits solely because they sit on distributed ledger technology. OSFI’s technology-neutral stance removed a key legal ambiguity and appears to have enabled the multi-bank collaboration.

Bringing all six systemically important banks into the pilot from day one addresses a practical interoperability problem. Tokenized deposits are only useful for interbank transfers if counterparties recognize and accept them; a network launched by a single institution risks creating isolated tokens that cannot move seamlessly between banks. By starting with full participation, the initiative avoids that chicken-and-egg constraint and aims to enable faster, potentially round-the-clock transfers and conditional, automated payments subject to each bank’s compliance and risk controls.

The Canadian effort builds on prior experiments in the domestic ecosystem. Project Samara in March tested issuance, trading and settlement of a C$100 million tokenized bond and found operational efficiency gains, improved data integrity and workflow benefits, while also highlighting liquidity costs, governance requirements and integration challenges. Unlike stablecoin frameworks enacted for non-bank issuers, this bank-led approach tokenizes deposits the banks already hold and keeps deposit responsibility and controls with each institution. The banks said the first phase will concentrate on interbank circulation before any links to other networks are built, and they left timetables and potential external connections undefined for now.