Deposit tokens are the banks' answer to stablecoins

Banks watched stablecoins colonize payment flows and formulated a characteristic response: the same capability, inside the perimeter. Deposit tokens, tokenized claims on commercial bank money, are moving through corporate pilots, offering programmable, always-on settlement that never leaves the banking system.

The pitch to treasurers is continuity: the counterparty is your bank, deposit insurance and capital rules apply as they always did, and the token is simply a faster form of the balance you already hold. For intra-company flows and supplier payments among clients of the same institution, the pilots report exactly the settlement gains stablecoins advertise.

The limitation is the network. A deposit token moves easily inside one bank and awkwardly between banks, which is why interoperability consortia have become the real battleground. The stablecoin era's lesson was that money wants to move everywhere; the banks are betting they can match that reach without surrendering the perimeter.