BIS Chief Favors Tokenized Deposits Over Stablecoins for Payments
Stablecoins are crypto assets designed to hold a fixed value, often against the dollar, but their ability to function as money depends on reliable redemption and interoperability. Unlike bank deposits, they lack a mechanism guaranteeing conversion at par into central bank money, while transfers between tokens may require secondary-market trades that introduce costs or depegging risk. Tokenized deposits remain supervised, account-based bank liabilities and can settle between institutions through central bank accounts, helping preserve the singleness of money.
Bank for International Settlements General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos told the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Aug. 28, 2026, that stablecoins were not yet credible for payments at scale. He said tokenized deposits should handle most day-to-day payments, with stablecoins serving specialized uses. De Cos also warned that stablecoins could fragment payment systems, complicate anti-money-laundering controls and encourage digital dollarization, while acknowledging that tokenized deposits still face interoperability, governance, legal and settlement hurdles before they can scale.
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The history behind this eventBanks Embrace Tokenized Deposits as Stablecoin Alternative
Tokenized deposits are blockchain-based representations of commercial bank deposits and remain liabilities of the issuing lender, subject to existing capital, liquidity and supervisory rules. Unlike stablecoins backed by separate reserve assets, they can retain deposit protections and interest-bearing features while enabling round-the-clock, programmable settlement. Banks see the model as a way to modernize cross-border payments and digital-asset transactions without surrendering deposits to non-bank issuers.
Wells Fargo plans to offer tokenized deposits to selected corporate and commercial clients from autumn 2026, joining JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC and BNY in developing bank-issued digital money. JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform already supports eight currencies and processes more than $7 billion a day. The expansion underscores growing institutional demand, but interoperability between bank networks remains unresolved, while faster 24-hour transfers could intensify liquidity pressures and accelerate withdrawals during periods of market stress.
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