How Deposits and Stablecoins Complete Banks’ Digital Money Offer

At a recent webinar hosted with Fireblocks, industry practitioners described how tokenised deposits and bank-issued stablecoins can together form a complete digital money offering for banks.

Tokenised deposits sit on the bank balance sheet and remain inside the bank’s KYC perimeter. Banks can use them for programmable operations such as real-time cash concentration, conditional disbursements, atomic settlement and instant delivery-versus-payment.

Bank-issued stablecoins move value across borders and across capital-control boundaries where local deposits cannot freely travel. Panel participants identified stablecoins as the instrument to carry liquidity between jurisdictions and currencies.

Use cases already reaching production include settlements outside traditional banking hours, delivery-versus-payment that clears instantly instead of over several days, and consolidated treasury visibility across entities without manual reconciliation. When combined, tokenised deposits and stablecoins can cover both the on-ledger liquidity leg and the cross-border transfer leg of a transaction.

Demand for connectivity to token rails comes from corporate treasuries as well as correspondent banks, counterparties and market infrastructure providers seeking faster settlement and better interoperability. Panelists reported that some correspondent banks now treat connection to these rails as a requirement in request-for-proposal processes.

Speakers noted that technical capability does not remove legal and policy barriers. Regulatory approvals, cross-border capital controls and local currency rules remain matters for supervisors and policy-makers before broader adoption in some jurisdictions.

The webinar featured Shrutisagar (Shruti) Chandrasekaran, vice-president of Global Business Solutions at Fireblocks, with Scott Hamilton, global payments and liquidity expert, serving as moderator.