JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are planning a network for tokenized deposits, operated by The Clearing House. The earliest launch is set for the first half of 2027, with instant settlement, 24/7 liquidity movement and cross-border payments for corporate clients.
The Clearing House is a private-sector payments company owned by 24 of the largest US banks. As the country's only private ACH and wire operator, the firm, founded in 1853, processes nearly 2 trillion USD daily. That corresponds to roughly half of all commercial payment transactions in the US. In 2017, it additionally launched the RTP network for real-time payments, the first new US payment infrastructure in 40 years, with 24/7 settlement and the ISO-20022 standard. Today, RTP reaches a large share of US demand deposit accounts. The planned network, referred to internally as "the bridge" or "the chain", builds on this infrastructure and on the trust ecosystem of the member banks. However, the banks have not yet selected a blockchain provider.
Instant settlement for multinational corporations
The network targets four core functions: instant settlement, continuous round-the-clock liquidity movement, cross-border payments and treasury management for large corporate clients. The primary target group is multinational corporations that must manage their operating liquidity across national borders. For these clients, a system for tokenized deposits promises to settle payments without the delays of traditional correspondent banking relationships. At the same time, capital that today remains tied up overnight or over weekends could move at any moment.
The technical foundation for this is in place. The existing RTP network already processes more than one million real-time payments daily, though with a transaction limit of 10 million USD and without the programmability of a blockchain. This is precisely where the new network comes in. Specifically, it combines the trust structures and reach of the member banks with a tokenized settlement model. For corporate treasuries that today hold liquidity across multiple currencies and time zones, this could therefore lower capital requirements significantly.
In concrete terms, however, much remains open. The consortium has not yet fixed the underlying blockchain provider, nor does an official name for the platform exist. Two working names circulate within the consortium. Notably, some banks speak of "the bridge" and others of "the chain".
"This is a big step for the banks." - David Watson, CEO, The Clearing House
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Stablecoins as the trigger
Behind the initiative stands the growing pressure from stablecoins. Providers such as Circle with USDC, Tether with USDT and PayPal with PYUSD have for years been pushing into payments, a core business of the established banks. These tokens settle billions of USD daily and are increasingly gaining importance in the institutional space as well. As a result, a concrete risk emerges. Corporate clients could park their operating funds in stablecoins and thereby withdraw deposits from the regulated banking system.
This deposit-flight risk hits the banks at a sensitive point, because corporate deposits rank among the cheaper and more stable funding sources. If operating liquidity shifts on a large scale to non-bank issuers, that weakens the balance-sheet base of the institutions. With their own network, they are therefore trying to replicate the speed and programmability of stablecoins without leaving regulated territory or losing their clients to external providers.
Tokenized deposits are meant to prevent exactly this outflow. They are digital representations of real bank deposits on a blockchain. Unlike stablecoins, they remain on the bank balance sheet, carry FDIC insurance and fall under full banking regulation. The institutions thus position themselves as a regulated alternative to non-bank issuers. Shahmir Khaliq, Head of Services at Citi, described the network as a step that "cements the role of banks in financing, in money management and in capital markets". The product, however, is not yet being actively requested by clients. Mark Monaco, Head of Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, accordingly tempered expectations. Any kind of new adoption takes time.
The regulatory advantage through the GENIUS Act
The decisive lever comes from US legislation. President Trump signed the GENIUS Act in July 2025, the first US federal law with a comprehensive regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. The law passed the Senate 68 to 30 and the House of Representatives 308 to 122, that is, with broad bipartisan support. However, the GENIUS Act explicitly excludes tokenized bank deposits from its scope. For deposit-token products, banks consequently do not need a separate stablecoin license.
From this arises a structural asymmetry in favor of the banks. The GENIUS Act prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest to holders, while tokenized deposits may continue to bear interest. For corporate clients that hold large liquidity balances, this interest advantage is furthermore a weighty argument against switching to USDC or USDT. The consortium therefore uses the regulatory framework not by chance, but deliberately as a competitive lever.
The next regulatory milestone comes from the OCC. In 2026, the supervisory authority first published a draft rule under the GENIUS Act. The law's effective date takes hold at the earlier of two dates: 18 months after enactment, that is, early January 2027, or 120 days after publication of the final rules. Consequently, the regulatory framework is likely to fall close in time to the planned network launch in the first half of 2027.
JPMorgan's groundwork and the market for tokenized deposits
The consortium does not come out of nowhere. JPMorgan initially launched its USD deposit token JPMD in November 2025 on Coinbase's Base network, an Ethereum Layer-2, for institutional clients. The pilot partners included Mastercard, Coinbase and B2C2. A few weeks later, in January 2026, BNY launched its own tokenized-deposit service. It runs on a private, permissioned blockchain, with ICE, Citadel Securities, Ripple Prime and Circle as early users. The custodian manages, according to market estimates, nearly 58 trillion USD in assets and thus ranks among the largest in the world.
The market is therefore already moving, though in separate silos. So far, each bank operates its own infrastructure. That complicates transfers between the systems and limits the practical benefit for large clients. A foretaste of the standardization idea finally came in November 2025 with an interoperability framework from DBS Bank and Kinexys by J.P. Morgan. It is meant to enable transfers of tokenized deposits between different blockchains and thereby aims at an industry standard.
Against this background, the consortium network can be read as an attempt to dissolve the fragmentation through a shared infrastructure and to set such a standard. In addition, a separate Cari Network of five regional banks is reportedly set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026 for the retail segment, although this detail has not yet been broadly confirmed.
