Canada’s Big Six Banks Launch Collaborative Tokenized Deposit Network

The project includes Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and Toronto-Dominion Bank. Unlike stablecoins, which rely on reserve assets, these tokenized deposits remain direct liabilities of the issuing bank. The digital ledger technology serves merely as the infrastructure for moving existing funds, ensuring the product retains its status as a conventional bank deposit under the oversight of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

This move mirrors efforts by major American lenders, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, which are currently developing similar interbank deposit networks through The Clearing House. By establishing a shared framework, the Canadian banks hope to solve the fragmentation issues that occur when individual institutions operate closed-loop digital asset systems. While the initial phase focuses exclusively on transfers between domestic participants, the banks envision future connectivity with external digital asset networks. The initiative follows the successful completion of Project Samara, a central bank-led experiment that demonstrated how distributed ledger technology can improve operational efficiency and settlement speed for bond trading.