Canada's Six Largest Banks Join Forces to Build a Shared Digital-Dollar Network

Six Canadian banks announce shared tokenized deposits

RBC, TD, BMO, Scotiabank, CIBC and National Bank announced Tuesday that they will jointly explore a shared Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit infrastructure, starting with transfers between the banks themselves. The first phase is not aimed at consumer wallets, and the project is separate from the Bank of Canada’s shelved digital-dollar consultation. It is a plan to change how ordinary bank deposits settle between institutions, rather than to create a new currency for consumers.

What the banks announced

A tokenized deposit is a regular bank deposit represented as a digital token on a shared ledger. It keeps the same money, the same bank liability and the same existing rules, while changing the network used to record and move it. The six banks said they want the system to be “competitive and secure,” while keeping the safeguards that already govern commercial bank money. They also said they want the door open for other Canadian deposit-taking institutions to eventually join.

Why the plan could matter

Interbank transfers in Canada can be slow to clear outside basic e-transfer. A shared token system would, in theory, let the participating banks settle those transfers instantly and around the clock. It could also support payments that can be programmed to trigger automatically, such as releasing funds the moment a shipment clears customs. Customers likely would not see any of this directly. It would run in the background, the same way customers rarely think about the wiring behind an Automated Clearing House transfer today.

How it differs from a digital Canadian dollar

The plan is different from Canada’s digital-dollar debate. The Bank of Canada ran a public consultation on a possible digital Canadian dollar in 2023 that drew nearly 90,000 responses. 85% of respondents said they would not use a hypothetical digital Canadian dollar, and many placed a high value on privacy and continued access to cash. Canada has also tried digital cash before and shelved it: the Royal Canadian Mint sold off its MintChip digital-cash pilot in 2016, and the app built on it shut down for good in 2018.

The competition in the United States

In the United States, JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are building a rival tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, the bank-owned real-time payments operator, targeting a first-half 2027 launch, largely to keep stablecoins from siphoning off deposits. 39 state banking associations in the United States have their own version, the BankChain Alliance, aimed at community and regional lenders.

Scotiabank and TD are also named among the 21 banks backing a separate joint USD stablecoin, also targeting the first half of 2027. That means the same institutions are betting on tokenized deposits and stablecoins at once. BMO went live this year as the first bank on CME Group’s tokenized cash platform on Google Cloud, letting institutional clients move United States dollars around the clock for margin and collateral.

What comes next

The six Canadian banks have not set a launch date. The first phase remains limited to transfers between the participating institutions, and opening the system to other deposit-taking players is still a stated goal, not a commitment. The proposal is about interbank settlement infrastructure, not a new cryptocurrency and not a central bank digital currency.