Canada's Six Largest Banks Join Forces to Explore Tokenized Deposits

Canada's six largest banks — Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, The Bank of Nova Scotia and TD Bank Group — announced on September 22, 2026 a joint exploration of tokenized deposits backed by the Canadian dollar. Together, the six institutions account for roughly 90% of Canada's financial market, giving the initiative weight across the country's retail and commercial banking sector.

The stated goal is to modernise domestic payment infrastructure. According to the banks' promoters, the effort is intended to "offer faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers." They added that "this collaborative effort reflects the shared vision that, as digital money evolves globally, Canada's payments infrastructure must remain competitive and secure."

The first phase of the project will focus on testing the transfer of tokenized deposits between the participating banks. A later phase is intended to connect this structure with other digital asset initiatives, though no details have been disclosed on how that connection would be established.

Building on Project Samara

The announcement follows Project Samara, a pilot carried out in March 2026 in which RBC and TD participated alongside Export Development Canada. That project involved the issuance of a 100 million Canadian dollar tokenized bond, settled using wholesale money from the Bank of Canada on a Hyperledger Fabric network. The pilot is being cited by the banks as evidence that tokenized settlement can work within Canada's existing central bank infrastructure.

Part of a wider trend

The Canadian initiative arrives as similar efforts advance elsewhere. In the United States, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo have been reported to be forming a stablecoin alliance of their own. At the international level, the Bank for International Settlements has coordinated a cross-border pilot test involving 22 private entities and five central banks, using the US dollar, euro, British pound, Japanese yen, Swiss franc and South Korean won. That pilot recorded an average transfer time of 80 seconds.

Taken together, the Canadian project positions the country's dominant banks alongside these global experiments in tokenized settlement, though the scope of eventual implementation, the regulatory framework governing it, and the technical mechanics of linking Canadian tokenized deposits to other digital asset systems have not yet been specified.