Canada’s six largest banks have begun exploring a shared Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system for interbank payments, in a joint announcement posted by TD Bank Group on September 22.
Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group are taking part. Their joint statement describes a first phase that moves tokenized deposits across Canadian financial institutions, with a longer-term goal of connecting to other digital asset initiatives and opening to other deposit-taking institutions. The banks have reportedly stopped short of committing to issue a tokenized deposit, and no ledger platform or launch date has been named.
A tokenized deposit is not a stablecoin. A tokenized Canadian dollar represents money held at a regulated bank and stays a liability of that bank, insured and prudentially regulated. A fiat-backed stablecoin is a separate digital asset backed by reserves held by its issuer.
That distinction was already on paper. 12 days before the announcement, on September 10, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) said in a statement on tokenized and other digitally represented deposits that tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” adding that the technology a financial product runs on does not decide its legal nature.
Stablecoins answer to a different rulebook. Canada enacted its Stablecoin Act as part of Bill C-15 in March 2026, a federal framework for fiat-backed stablecoins expected to take effect in 2027. Issuers that are not financial institutions must register with the Bank of Canada, hold reserves of at least 1:1 in high-quality liquid assets and offer redemption at par, and they may not market their tokens as deposits or as publicly insured. Banks and credit unions already under prudential supervision sit outside that regime.
The two rulebooks meet at a clean border. Stablecoin issuers must back their tokens and cannot call them deposits. Banks that put deposits on ledgers keep the insurance and supervision that come with a balance sheet. The banks say the project aims to deliver faster, more efficient and programmable payments while preserving financial stability and regulatory oversight, so a Canadian dollar on these rails stays money the bank owes its customer, whichever ledger records it.
More banks could join the project later, the joint statement says.
