Canada’s six largest banks have jointly launched an initiative to explore tokenized Canadian‑dollar deposits, marking one of the most significant steps yet toward modernizing the country’s payments infrastructure.
The project aims to create a secure, bank‑issued digital CAD that can move across institutions with greater speed, programmability, and settlement efficiency.
As global financial systems change its outlook on tokenized money, Canada’s Big Six are strategizing to ensure that domestic payments remain competitive, secure, and aligned with emerging digital‑asset ecosystems.
The Big Six Project
Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD Bank Group have formed a joint venture to explore a tokenized CAD deposit system.
The first phase focuses on enabling tokenized deposits to move efficiently across participating institutions, with a longer‑term goal of connecting to broader digital‑asset initiatives. The banks emphasized that the system is designed to support faster, programmable, 24/7 payments while keeping customer funds within the regulated banking system.
Canada’s initiative is in harmony with a rising global trend: banks worldwide are racing to tokenize deposits for cross‑border payments and real‑time settlement.
The Big Six aim to test digital representations of commercial bank deposits, enabling interbank transfers that bypass traditional settlement bottlenecks. The project may eventually integrate with tokenized‑asset platforms, wholesale digital‑currency pilots, and cross‑border settlement networks.
The banks noted that additional institutions may join later, portraying that the initiative is intended to become a national‑scale digital‑money infrastructure rather than a closed consortium.
Traditional Banks Leading Innovations
The Big Six collectively dominate Canada’s banking system, spanning retail banking, commercial lending, capital markets, and wealth management. Their joint move into tokenized deposits depicts a structural shift in how Canadian financial institutions view digital money.
Tokenized deposits differ from stablecoins: they are digital representations of existing bank deposits, backed by regulated institutions rather than private issuers. This distinction is crucial because it preserves deposit insurance, regulatory oversight, and systemic stability.
Canada’s payments infrastructure—particularly high‑value settlement through Lynx—operates only during business hours and requires banks to pre‑fund intraday liquidity accounts. Tokenized deposits could enable real‑time, around‑the‑clock settlement, reducing liquidity costs and operational constraints.
Also, programmable payments could unlock new efficiencies for corporate treasury operations, enabling automated settlement, conditional transfers, and integrated cash‑management workflows.
The initiative positions Canadian banks to compete globally as tokenized‑money systems proliferate across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Furthermore, the project shows that digital money is evolving rapidly. Through recognition and exploration of tokenized deposits now, Canada’s banks aim to ensure that domestic payments remain secure, competitive, and interoperable with emerging digital‑asset ecosystems.
The project also builds on Canada’s earlier experiments.
In March, the Bank of Canada, RBC, and TD completed Project Samara, issuing and settling a CAD‑denominated bond on a distributed ledger using tokenized wholesale CAD. This demonstrated that tokenized money can support large‑value financial‑market transactions.
The new interbank deposit initiative extends this work into retail and commercial payments, creating a unified digital‑money strategy across wholesale and interbank layers.