Canada's Six Biggest Banks Team Up on a Shared Digital-Dollar Network

Canada's six biggest banks announced a collaborative effort to explore tokenized Canadian-dollar deposits, with an initial phase focused on moving deposits between the participating institutions. The banks described the initiative as a representation of regular bank deposits on a shared ledger rather than a new cryptocurrency or a central bank digital currency. They said the system should remain competitive and secure while retaining the regulatory safeguards that govern commercial bank money. The first phase will be limited to interbank transfers and does not include sending tokens directly into consumer wallets. The banks noted a goal of eventually allowing other Canadian deposit-taking institutions to join, but that broader inclusion remains an aspiration rather than a firm commitment and no launch date has been set. Proponents say tokenized deposits could enable near-instant, around-the-clock settlement for interbank payments and support programmable transaction logic, such as automatic release of funds when contractual conditions are met. For customers, the banks suggested the change would largely be invisible—operating in the background like current clearing systems—while improving settlement speed compared with some existing interbank processes in Canada. The announcement sits alongside other industry efforts: Scotiabank and TD are part of a 21-bank project to build a U.S. dollar stablecoin, and BMO is already live on CME Group's tokenized cash platform on Google Cloud to move U.S. dollars for institutional margin and collateral use. The project is separate from the Bank of Canada's 2023 public consultation on a digital Canadian dollar, which found 85% of respondents said they would not use a hypothetical CBDC. Similar bank-led tokenized deposit initiatives are underway in the U.S., where major banks through The Clearing House aim for a 2027 launch to counter stablecoin deposit flows.