A consortium of leading U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, is planning to roll out a shared tokenized deposit network as early as the first half of 2027, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and other sources. The network will be operated by the Clearing House, a private-sector payments company owned by these major financial institutions, and is internally referred to by some banks as “the bridge” or “the chain.” The platform aims to integrate existing bank payment rails with blockchain infrastructure, enabling instant, around-the-clock settlement of tokenized deposits—digital representations of regular bank deposits issued on a blockchain. The system would allow participating banks to move deposits across distributed ledger technology without relying on external stablecoin issuers, thereby keeping customer funds within the regulated banking framework.
Clearing House CEO David Watson described the initiative as a “big move for the banks,” noting that the industry is facing a “radically different” future built around on-chain payments and finance. The network’s early users are expected to be large multinational corporations seeking to streamline treasury operations, cross-border payments, and real-time liquidity management. This marks a direct response to the rising popularity of stablecoins and fears that they could pull deposits away from traditional lenders. While no blockchain vendor has been selected yet, the consortium’s effort aligns with a broader tokenization push by major banks: JPMorgan has already issued its JPM Coin on Base Layer 2, BNY launched tokenized deposit services, and DBS and Kinexys by J.P. Morgan are working on interoperability for tokenized deposit transfers.
