Canada’s six largest banks—Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank and TD Bank Group—are jointly exploring a tokenized Canadian-dollar deposit system. Announced on September 22, 2026, the initiative aims to keep deposits inside the banking system rather than shifting them into privately issued stablecoins. It comes 12 days after the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions clarified that tokenized deposits remain legally equivalent to traditional deposits.
The first phase focuses on moving tokenized deposits between financial institutions, not launching a consumer digital Canadian dollar. No consumer launch date, blockchain architecture, or issuance model was disclosed. OSFI emphasized that technology does not determine a financial product’s legal nature, and banks must still comply with applicable laws, technology, cyber, and third-party risk requirements.
Canada has already tested the underlying infrastructure. In March, Project Samara saw the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC and TD complete a real C$100 million tokenized bond issuance and settlement using distributed-ledger technology, with payments settled in wholesale central-bank money. Additionally, the BIS-led Project Agorá has completed real-value transactions worth approximately CHF 800,000 using tokenized commercial-bank deposits and central-bank reserves across 17 scenarios, involving more than 40 financial institutions.
The project is not primarily a cryptocurrency initiative. Its longer-term significance lies in connecting tokenized money with tokenized financial assets, reducing reconciliation and settlement processes when money and securities move through separate systems. The first meaningful milestone will be whether the six banks can demonstrate interbank transfers of tokenized Canadian-dollar deposits while preserving the legal characteristics of conventional commercial-bank money.
