Wells Fargo Plans to Launch Tokenized Deposits This Fall

Wells Fargo reportedly hopes to launch tokenized deposits for corporate/commercial customers.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (Aug. 4) from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which calls the offering the latest example of how banking giants are embracing digital assets.

Company officials told the WSJ that offering — slated for the fall — will let clients transfer, program and settle funds around the clock via tokenized deposits, or traditional funds represented as digital tokens on a blockchain.

The deposits will at first cover American dollars and British pounds for cross-border payments, with plans to expand into more countries and currency next year, according to demand, Wells Fargo Chief Financial Officer Mike Santomassimo told the WSJ in an interview.

As the WSJ notes, the pending launch comes as Wall Street companies are increasingly adopting blockchain tech such as tokenized money-market funds to tokenized securities platforms, with the technology considered a quicker and more efficient way to settle transactions and move funds.

A group of American banks are planning to deploy a tokenized deposit network next year, and Wells Fargo says its tokenized deposits would be able to integrate with that network, along with private networks, the WSJ added.

JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup both have tokenized deposit products of their own, with Citi recently creating a way for its wealthy and institutional customers to trade shares of private companies over a blockchain, the report said.

The WSJ report also points out that banks tend to lean towards tokenized deposits rather than stablecoins, which have been at the heart of a dispute between banks and crypto companies.

Writing about this issue last month, PYMNTS observed that the Federal Reserve has warned that stablecoin adoption could transform bank deposits, funding structures and credit distribution, making these instruments of strategic relevance even to lenders that never issue them on their own.

“Today, stablecoins are like a drug trying to treat 20 different problems,” Prajit Nanu, founder and chief executive of real-time payments firm Nium, said in a recent interview with PYMNTS.

“Where we see a significant amount of opportunity is stablecoin not as a payments value, but as a settlement value,” he added. “Where we think stablecoin has the biggest value as, is a treasury layer across all the entities, where I can move money instantly among my entities.”