Tokenized Deposits Gain a Corporate Treasury Use Case

The announcement that major U.S. banks will launch a tokenized deposit network in 2027 grabbed headlines last week, where the initiative has been seen as the banking industry’s response to stablecoins.

But when executives gathered for The Clearing House’s media day days later, the discussion touched on the ripple effects of faster and more secure money movement, and a transformation of corporate treasury to boot.

The message from the executives on Monday (June 8) was that tokenized deposits are not simply about creating another digital asset. They can and will give businesses new ways to manage liquidity, automate cash movement and integrate payments into software-driven operations.

That distinction could shape where adoption happens first.

“The number one [use case] that we hear is cross-border,” said Sal Karakaplan, chief strategy officer at The Clearing House. He pointed to two recurring client needs: traditional business-to-business payments and multinational corporations that bank with multiple institutions. “The treasurer of that multinational corporation wants to move money in a seamless way,” he added.

The comments align with the rationale behind the newly announced network, which is expected to support use cases including programmable treasury operations, real-time liquidity management and cross-border payments.

Programmable Money Meets Programmable Business

Executives discussed the growing connection between enterprise software and payments.

“As B2B gets embedded into software and software is programmable,” Karakaplan said, “the actual money also needs to be programmable.”

Procurement systems automatically generate purchase orders. Enterprise resource planning platforms reconcile invoices. Treasury software monitors liquidity positions in real time. Connecting payment execution directly to those workflows could allow cash movement to become part of the business process itself.

The Clearing House management described tokenized deposits as infrastructure that could support those capabilities while continuing to settle through existing payment rails.

For finance teams, the potential benefit is not simply moving money faster. It is coordinating liquidity with operational events.

David Watson, CEO of The Clearing House, said the organization is already seeing where demand is taking shape.

“The primary use case we’ve seen the most traction on so far is higher value movements around the world, particularly intercompany movements,” Watson told reporters.

In offering a B2B example, he said, as banks’ customer needs evolve to include programmable transactions and smart contracts, tokenized deposits can be layered on top of the real-time payments (RTP) foundation. In his view, tokenization is part of a broader modernization journey in which instant payments provide the base and programmable money adds new capabilities.

Those transactions are common among multinational companies that routinely shift funds among subsidiaries and banking relationships.

Watson also described the operational friction banks are trying to eliminate. Today, moving from one bank’s tokenized deposit to another may require unwinding one position, wiring funds and recreating the deposit elsewhere.

“The whole idea from the banks was ‘how do we make that easy?’” Watson said, describing a process in which a client could request that one bank-issued token become another through a single instruction.

That functionality could have implications for treasury departments managing cash across multiple institutions as well as enterprise platforms that increasingly automate financial operations.

Stablecoins and Tokenized Deposits Are Not Identical

The media day also provided insight into how bank executives distinguish tokenized deposits from stablecoins.

Asked about the relationship between the two, Watson rejected the idea that they necessarily compete directly.

“I believe there is room for both,” he said.

He noted that tokenized deposits remain inside the banking system, allowing banks to continue lending against those deposits while maintaining existing regulatory treatment.

Karakaplan echoed that view, saying conversations with banks have focused less on defending against stablecoins and more on responding to client demand.

“I have had so many conversations with the participants the last 18 months about this. I don’t think I have had any conversation with any of them [that] said ‘I’m concerned about it,’” he said. Instead, banks have told him, “‘I have clients who are asking for certain things … and I need to meet their needs.’”

The Working Capital Opportunity

With an eye on working capital, PYMNTS asked whether treasury organizations have begun, or will begin, considering tokenization at particular transaction thresholds and whether security and visibility become catalysts for adoption.

Watson responded that each bank would make those decisions independently but pointed back to the same practical use cases: multinational corporations already moving funds internationally and looking for more efficient treasury operations.

That answer underscores a broader trend taking shape across payments. Businesses have spent years digitizing procurement, accounting and supply-chain management. The next phase looks toward embedding liquidity management into those same systems so that cash moves alongside business logic.