US Banks and The Clearing House Launch Tokenised Deposit Network
A coalition of major US banks is launching a bank-led initiative to enable the clearing and settlement of tokenised commercial bank deposits at scale through The Clearing House, the US payments company owned by 25 of the country’s largest financial institutions. Unveiled on 5 June 2026, the move represents the most significant coordinated effort by traditional banking infrastructure to connect on-chain activity with established fiat payment rails.
The initiative has two core components: an on-chain clearing and settlement mechanism for tokenised deposits between participating banks, operating within existing regulatory frameworks; and a connectivity layer linking blockchain-based activity to The Clearing House’s existing networks, including its RTP real-time payments system and the CHIPS high-value wire network. Settlement will be available around the clock, seven days a week.
Participating institutions named in the announcement include Bank of America, BMO Financial Group, BNY, Citi, Citizens Financial Group, Fifth Third Bank, HSBC, Huntington National Bank, JPMorgan, KeyBank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, Santander, TD Bank US, Truist, US Bank and Wells Fargo.
Why tokenised deposits, not stablecoins
The choice of tokenised commercial bank deposits as the instrument is deliberate and carries regulatory significance. Unlike stablecoins, which are typically liabilities of a non-bank issuer and carry varying degrees of regulatory backing, tokenised deposits remain liabilities of a licensed commercial bank. They preserve the credit-creation function of commercial banking and sit within existing deposit insurance and prudential frameworks. David Watson, president and chief executive officer of The Clearing House, said the initiative would “extend the safety, resiliency, and settlement certainty of regulated bank payment rails” to on-chain environments.
Citi’s head of Services, Shahmir Khaliq, noted that the firm already has tokenised deposit services live at scale, and framed this initiative as providing the shared clearing infrastructure needed for the broader industry to move in the same direction, covering both cash and securities settlement on a 24/7 basis.
Regulatory and competitive context
The announcement arrives at a moment of heightened regulatory interest in digital money. In the US, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued guidance permitting national banks to use distributed ledger technology for payment activities, while Congress is actively debating a federal stablecoin framework. A bank-controlled tokenised deposit infrastructure, operated by a regulated utility like The Clearing House, is positioned by its backers as the more conservative and legally coherent alternative to permitting non-bank stablecoin issuers to operate at the core of the payments system.
In Europe, the European Central Bank is running its own exploratory work on settlement of tokenised assets, and several large commercial banks are participants in the Eurosystem’s DLT trials. The TCH initiative is notable for being entirely bank-led and US-domestic in its initial scope, though several participating institutions, including HSBC and Santander, operate across multiple jurisdictions and are likely to push for interoperability with non-US infrastructure over time.
The stated use cases are broad: programmable treasury operations, real-time liquidity management, cross-border payments, digital asset settlement and what the release describes as agentic commerce applications, a reference to automated payment flows driven by AI agents. No live product timeline, pricing model or minimum viable participant threshold was disclosed in the announcement. The practical milestones to watch are the first interbank settlement on the new infrastructure and any regulatory approval or no-action guidance that accompanies the network’s operational launch.
