JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other major US banks are building a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting a launch in the first half of 2027, according to a Wall Street Journal report today.
The Clearing House, a real-time payments network owned collectively by the participating banks, will operate the system. It would allow member banks to move tokenized versions of customer deposits across blockchain infrastructure 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with instant settlement.
Clearing House CEO David Watson told the Journal the initiative is "a big move for the banks" and that the industry faces a "radically different" future around on-chain payments and finance. No blockchain partner has been selected; the project has been referred to internally as "the bridge" by some banks and "the chain" by others.
Tokenized deposits differ structurally from stablecoins: they represent actual bank deposits recorded on a blockchain, rather than a separate digital asset issued outside the traditional banking system. That distinction is central to the banks' pitch. The tokenized deposit approach preserves the existing regulatory and accounting framework, keeps funds within the insured deposit system, and avoids the disintermediation risk that stablecoins pose by drawing liquidity away from bank balance sheets.
That risk has become acute. Stablecoin legislation advancing in Washington – the CLARITY Act – has put banks on alert, particularly over provisions that could allow stablecoin issuers to offer interest-bearing products that would compete directly with bank deposit rates. The Clearing House network is partly a defensive play: a way to offer blockchain-based payment speed and programmability without ceding ground to crypto-native competitors.
JP Morgan has the most developed blockchain track record among the group. Its Kinexys platform already processes institutional payments via JPM Coin on its private blockchain, and the bank separately launched a deposit token on Base – Coinbase's public Layer 2 network – earlier this year, restricted to institutional clients. The new Clearing House network would extend similar infrastructure across the broader US banking system rather than operating within a single institution.
Citi's head of services, Shahmir Khaliq, said the network positions banks "in strength in capital markets and financing." Bank of America's head of global payments solutions, Mark Monaco, was more measured, noting clients are not "beating down the door" for tokenized deposits but that the network would prepare banks for greater adoption when demand materialises. Large multinational corporations – with complex cross-border payment and liquidity management needs – are expected to be among the earliest users.
