Banks are developing tokenized deposits to give corporate customers faster access to their money. In doing so, they are making the deposits they use for funding easier to move.
A research briefing from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City published Friday (Oct. 16) examined the implications for bank liquidity as tokenized deposits move toward commercial use.
Tokenized deposits remain commercial bank deposits, but their digital representation allows transfers on distributed-ledger infrastructure outside conventional banking and settlement schedules. The Kansas City Fed said in the briefing that most demand appears to come from multinational corporate treasurers interested in always-on liquidity management capabilities, international supplier payments and the cash side of tokenized securities transactions.
Banks will have to prepare for “faster, round-the-clock, and less consistent deposit outflows,” the briefing said. Tokenization could also create changes in deposit “stickiness” and the traditional division between operational deposits used for everyday business and nonoperational balances.
Banks value commercial operating deposits as a source of funding and as the basis for broader relationships across payments, treasury management and credit. The longer and more consistently those balances remain at a bank, the more dependable they are as a funding source.
Tokenization gives corporate customers greater control over when those balances move.
Tokenized deposits are designed to let treasurers move bank money outside conventional banking and settlement windows. The deposit becomes more useful to the corporate customer at the same time its movement becomes less tied to the schedules banks have traditionally managed around.
PYMNTS Intelligence’s Working Capital Index found in September that 83% of North American middle-market firms used a working capital solution in 2026, the highest share recorded in the series. Firms received 12% of customer payments early, down from 35% a year earlier.
Bank financing remained closely connected to these relationships. Among companies using working capital solutions, 69% used bank lines of credit, up from 57% in 2025.
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Banks are also adding tokenization to the services surrounding corporate deposits.
The Clearing House is developing a tokenized deposit network for participating financial institutions, with availability planned for the first half of 2027, PYMNTS reported. The model would allow a corporate treasurer to transfer a tokenized deposit between participating banks with a single instruction while the corresponding fiat funds settle between the institutions.
BNY enabled on-chain representations of participating clients’ deposit balances on its Digital Assets platform in January, PYMNTS reported.
Meanwhile, five regional banks are participating in the Cari Network, designed to support tokenized deposit transfers among customers of participating institutions, PYMNTS reported in February.
These projects give corporate customers another way to use commercial bank money without first converting it into another form of digital asset. They also extend the hours during which deposits can move and reduce some of the operational constraints around transferring them.
Banks have traditionally sought commercial deposits through pricing, payments capabilities, treasury services and access to credit. Tokenization adds the speed and availability of the deposit itself to that calculation.
For corporate treasurers, faster movement means more control over cash. For banks, it means managing commercial deposits that can leave faster and at any hour. The economics turn on the same feature for both sides. Tokenization makes commercial deposits easier to move.
Deposit pricing, liquidity management and the economics of treasury relationships all rely partly on how corporate balances behave. As tokenized deposits allow money to move around the clock, banks will need to account for that mobility when valuing deposits, managing liquidity and deciding how much to invest in tokenized treasury services.
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