Six of the largest banks in Canada revealed this week that they are jointly exploring the development of Canadian dollar based digital money solutions.
The participating banks are the Bank of Montreal, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the National Bank of Canada, the Royal Bank of Canada, The Bank of Nova Scotia, and TD Bank.
The collaboration between the six major institutions centres around shared view: As digital money evolves globally, Canada’s payments infrastructure “must continue to be competitive and secure.”
The partnership will start with a “tokenized deposits initiative.”
The project will explore “tokenized deposit solutions to drive responsible innovation and facilitate broad participation in the digital money ecosystem for the benefit of all Canadians,” according to an official statement.
A successful solution would deliver faster, more efficient and programmable payments to Canadian customers while preserving safety, stability, and effective regulatory oversight.
The first phase of the project will “move tokenized deposits efficiently across Canadian financial institutions with a longer-term goal to connect with other emerging digital assets initiatives,” according to the banks, which expect to bring “other deposit-taking institutions” on at “the appropriate time.”
Earlier this year, all six banks joined the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, which emerged after years of research within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and academia as a “practical, multilateral solution that … helps ensure capital flows at the scale and speed required to support allied defence, security and resilience.”
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