Tokenized Deposits
Commercial bank deposits represented as tokens on a ledger, remaining a direct liability of the issuing bank.
A tokenized deposit is an ordinary bank deposit recorded in token form. Legally and economically, it is still money owed by a regulated bank to its customer — covered by the same prudential rules and, where applicable, deposit insurance.
This distinguishes tokenized deposits from stablecoins. A stablecoin is typically issued by a non-bank and backed by a pool of reserve assets; a tokenized deposit is part of the banking system's balance sheet. Central banks and the BIS have generally presented tokenized deposits as more compatible with the existing two-tier monetary system.
The practical promise is programmability: deposits that can move on the same ledger as tokenized assets, enabling atomic settlement and automated payment logic while keeping money inside the regulated perimeter.
In practice
- Several large banks operate deposit-token or tokenized cash platforms for institutional clients, primarily for intraday and cross-border treasury movements.
- Project Agorá tests tokenized commercial bank deposits alongside tokenized wholesale central bank money.
Primary sources
- Annual Economic Report 2025, Chapter III ↗BIS
- The Next-Generation Monetary and Financial SystemBank for International Settlements, 2025
Related concepts
All concepts
An independent TokenShares explainer. Informational only; the cited publications are the authoritative sources.