Overview
- A joint announcement Tuesday by BMO, CIBC, National Bank, RBC, Scotiabank and TD said they will test transfers of tokenized Canadian‑dollar deposits between the six banks.
- A tokenized deposit is a digital representation of an existing bank balance that stays on the issuing bank’s books and differs from a stablecoin because it remains a bank liability.
- The project’s first phase will focus only on moving tokens between participating banks and is explicitly exploratory with no firm issuance commitment or launch date.
- The tests follow OSFI guidance that treats tokenized deposits the same as conventional deposits and build on earlier pilots such as Project Samara, which showed faster settlement but also flagged liquidity, governance and integration challenges.
- If successful, the shared network could enable near‑real‑time and programmable 24/7 payments for corporate and treasury users, but banks and supervisors must resolve operational, legal and funding risks before any commercial rollout.