Wells Fargo joins JPMorgan and Citi in the race to tokenize Wall Street’s settlement rails

Wells Fargo (WFC) will offer tokenized deposits for select corporate and commercial clients later this year, starting with enabling round-the-clock U.S. dollar-to-British pound transactions on its proprietary blockchain.

The bank frames round-the-clock settlement, programmable payments and parity with its existing deposit protections as future enhancements, saying the system will let clients move, program and settle funds 24/7/365 “when fully deployed.”

The limited initial rollout will expand to more clients, countries and currencies throughout 2027. Its system will automatically route eligible payments through tokenized deposits when doing so improves speed or flexibility, without changing how clients interact with the bank.

Tokenized deposits represent conventional bank balances on a blockchain. Unlike stablecoins, they remain commercial bank money and Wells Fargo says they will carry the same regulatory protections and deposit-insurance eligibility as its existing deposit products.

Future features will include conditional payments using smart contracts, according to the bank.

The platform could also support in-house custodial wallets and connections to other blockchains. Wells Fargo said it can integrate with a shared tokenized-deposit network being developed by The Clearing House, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bank joins JPMorgan and Citi, which already operate institutional tokenized-deposit services as they battle the growing threat of stablecoins reducing their deposit bases. The rollout follows Wells Fargo’s March trademark application for WFUSD, which could be associated with a deposit token or stablecoin.

Wells Fargo has been developing blockchain payment rails since at least 2019, when it announced Wells Fargo Digital Cash for internal cross-border transfers. It later started settling foreign-exchange transactions with HSBC through a shared blockchain.

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