Banks face mandate pressure to adopt

Banks are under pressure from clients and other banks to adopt both tokenised deposits and stablecoins to stay competitive. According to a webinar announcement from Finextra, financial institutions offering only one of these digital money instruments are providing an incomplete service.

Transaction banking requires programmable liquidity, while retail banking needs real-time cross-border payments. The source states tokenised deposits address the first need, and stablecoins address the second. A bank building only one is described as being only "half in the digital money business."

The distinct roles of two instruments

Tokenised deposits operate within a bank's regulated balance sheet and its know-your-customer perimeter. This makes them suitable for programmable operations like real-time cash concentration, conditional disbursements, and atomic settlement. They allow liquidity to be used actively across different entities instead of sitting idle.

Bank-issued stablecoins, conversely, perform a function deposits cannot. They move value across international borders and handle capital-control boundaries that can trap local-currency balances. Offering both instruments allows a bank to serve the complete needs of a multinational treasurer operating across both convertible and controlled currencies.

Use cases moving into production

The webinar material indicates these applications are already advancing beyond theory. Specific implementations include settlement outside traditional banking hours and delivery-versus-payment that clears instantly rather than after days. They also enable treasury visibility across corporate entities without requiring manual reconciliation.

Used in combination, tokenised deposits and stablecoins can cover an entire financial flow instead of just a single segment. This complete coverage is becoming a baseline expectation in modern financial services.

Demand driven by correspondent networks

Pressure for adoption is not coming solely from end clients. The source attributes significant demand to correspondents, counterparties, and market infrastructure participants seeking greater efficiency and interoperability. Correspondent banks increasingly expect connection to these digital money capabilities.

This shift turns the ability to handle tokenised deposits and stablecoins into a "mandate qualifier." Banks lacking this connectivity risk losing request-for-proposal competitions to rivals that possess it. Regulatory and capital control considerations remain critical hurdles that technology alone cannot solve.

The Finextra webinar, hosted in association with Fireblocks, will feature a panel including Shrutisagar Chandrasekaran, Vice President of Global Business Solutions at Fireblocks, and moderator Scott Hamilton, a Global Payments & Liquidity Expert. It aims to discuss where these instruments pay off in bank mandate strategies.