Tokenised deposits and stablecoins expand banks’ digital money

Banks that combine tokenised deposits and bank-issued stablecoins can manage regulated on-ledger liquidity and move value across borders, covering more stages of a payment than either instrument alone. Industry participants say the two tools together can support a full transaction lifecycle rather than a single leg.

Tokenised deposits sit on a bank’s regulated balance sheet and inside its existing know-your-customer perimeter. Firms are using them for programmable operations such as real-time cash concentration across legal entities, conditional or automated disbursement, atomic settlement tied to trade events, and reducing idle liquidity across a corporate group.

Bank-issued stablecoins are designed to transfer value quickly across jurisdictions and to operate around capital-control boundaries that can trap local-currency balances. Providers describe them as a means to enable near-instant transfers between jurisdictions where traditional correspondent routes are slower, restricted or subject to local limits.

Practical use cases are moving into production. Reported examples include payments and settlement outside traditional banking hours, delivery-versus-payment that clears instantly instead of taking days, card and merchant flows settled via tokenised rails, and treasury systems that achieve near real-time visibility across entities without manual reconciliation.

Demand is coming from corporate treasuries seeking faster liquidity and simpler reconciliation, and from correspondent banks, counterparties and market infrastructure providers seeking greater efficiency and interoperability. Several correspondent banks now list connectivity to tokenised and programmable rails as a mandatory capability in requests for proposals.

Regulatory and policy rules remain constraints. Capital controls, local-currency rules and prudential requirements limit where stablecoins can be used and how tokenised deposits are treated on bank balance sheets. Firms and authorities are still defining compliance frameworks, custody standards and how new token-based rails will interact with existing payment systems.

A webinar hosted with Fireblocks will convene payments and custody technology providers and global payments specialists to discuss where tokenised deposits and bank-issued stablecoins make commercial sense and how banks should reflect the capabilities in mandate strategies. Panel participants include Shrutisagar (Shruti) Chandrasekaran, VP, Global Business Solutions at Fireblocks, and Scott Hamilton, who will moderate the discussion.