Canada’s Six Biggest Banks Confirm Tokenized CAD Deposit Pilot, Two Outlets Agree

Six of Canada’s largest banks, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group, jointly announced on Tuesday that they are exploring a system for moving tokenized Canadian dollar deposits between financial institutions. Two independent outlets, Cointelegraph and CoinDesk, confirm the same core facts: a joint bank statement, a defined first phase, and a regulatory clarification that landed less than two weeks earlier.

What’s verified: the six named banks, the joint Tuesday announcement, the first-phase scope (interbank movement of tokenized deposits within Canada before any link to outside digital asset systems), and the Sept. 10 statement from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). Both reports describe the OSFI position the same way: tokenized deposits are “not legally distinct from traditional deposits,” meaning the underlying technology does not change a product’s legal nature.

What a Tokenized Deposit Actually Is, and Isn’t

A tokenized deposit is a digital representation of money already sitting in a regulated bank account. It stays a liability of the issuing bank. That distinction matters for anyone comparing this to stablecoins, which are separate digital assets backed by reserves the issuer holds outside the banking system proper.

OSFI’s Sept. 10 clarification removed a lingering legal ambiguity: a deposit doesn’t stop being a deposit because it moves on a token rail. Without that ruling, a bank consortium project of this size would have carried open regulatory risk. The timing, less than two weeks between the OSFI statement and the joint bank announcement, is not coincidence; it’s the sequence both outlets independently report.

Phase One: Interbank First, External Systems Later

The initial phase is narrow by design. It focuses on moving tokenized deposits between the six participating banks, with the stated goal of faster, programmable payments inside Canada’s own financial plumbing. Only after that stage do the banks plan to consider connections to other digital asset systems, and separately, to open participation to other deposit-taking institutions beyond the original six.

Neither source reports a launch date, a transaction volume target, or a technical settlement layer. CIBC did not respond to a Cointelegraph request for additional detail before publication. Readers should treat those specifics as unresolved rather than assume a near-term go-live.

Part of a Broader Canadian Digital-Money Push

This is not an isolated move. Canada enacted its Stablecoin Act in March, part of a wider regulatory build-out around digital money that now includes the OSFI deposit clarification. Together, the two developments give Canadian banks a clearer legal runway for tokenized products than existed a year ago.

For builders and desks tracking institutional tokenization, the takeaway is procedural rather than dramatic: a regulator defined the legal status of a product type, and within two weeks the six largest banks in the country moved from theory to a named, phased pilot. That sequencing, confirmed by two independent outlets, is the underlying event. Everything past phase one, including any link to public blockchain rails, remains undisclosed.

Sources

• cointelegraph.com
• coindesk.com