Stablecoins & Tokenized Deposits - What U.S. Banks and Credit Unions Are Doing Next

by: Alex Pelin

Alex Pelin is the Founder of The Financial Club — the only global premier network for fintech professionals — and Co-Founder of Nova Institute. Through these platforms, Alex is building high-trust networks and advancing global dialogue on the future of financial technology and artificial intelligence.

Globally recognized for creating the Fintech Retreat and DeFi Retreat, Alex has pioneered a new model for curated, intimate gatherings that unite founders, executives, policymakers, and investors to drive meaningful progress in financial services. At Nova Institute, Alex focuses on education, advocacy, and international collaboration to ensure emerging technologies serve both industry and society.

Analysis, Stablecoins

As of September 2025, stablecoins and tokenized deposits have crossed from theory to production. Payments firms are abstracting the crypto bits. Large banks are quietly running deposit-token pilots for treasury and collateral. Card networks are building multi-token rails with bank-grade rulebooks.

From where I sit—talking every week with founders, VCs, bank execs, and regulators—the winners aren’t the ones “doing crypto.” They’re the ones compressing settlement time and counterparty risk in ways their teams can measure by quarter-end. That’s the game.

This piece is an analysis and a playbook. It’s opinionated on purpose.

What actually changed

A real supervisory path has emerged. Whether you issue a payment stablecoin or not, there’s now a credible path to operate with bank-grade controls: reserve quality, redemption rights, disclosures, and an exam program you can prepare for. Even if your first move is “partner, don’t issue,” the rules of the road are clearer than they were a year ago.
Deposit tokens are live in the wild. The largest institutions have proved you can tokenize a bank liability and use it for intraday liquidity, PvP/DvP settlement, and tokenized collateral transfers—without turning your core inside-out. That’s a blueprint community and regional players can copy with partners.
Merchants and platforms are asking for instant settlement, not blockchains. The more volumes shift to marketplaces, gig platforms, and global SaaS, the more “T+0, programmable, 24/7” becomes a baseline expectation. If you don’t offer a programmable dollar with real-time settlement, your merchants will find someone who does.

Vocabulary to keep board conversations sane

Payment stablecoin: A token redeemable 1:1 for dollars with an explicit reserve and redemption framework. Think “programmable settlement unit” aimed at payments, payouts, and cross-border.
Tokenized deposit: A tokenized claim on your bank—same legal deposit, new form factor—issued to known, permissioned wallets. Think “instant cash leg” for treasury, collateral, and corporate cash management.

Both exist. They serve different jobs. You can use both.

It's important to add a few notes here as shared by my friend Glendy Kam (CPO, Tassat):

- "Under the GENIUS Act, payment stablecoins cannot pay yield/interest/reward on-token. You can design value around them (e.g., off-token loyalty or fee discounts), but the instrument itself is non-yielding. That’s where bank deposit tokens win. Beyond being an efficient payment rail, a dollar-pegged stablecoin can serve as stored value in markets with high currency volatility and currency risk—material for exporters, platforms, remittances, and dollarized treasuries."

Strategy: three lanes (you can run more than one)

Lane 1 — Fast-follow payments: Integrate third-party payment stablecoins

Where it wins:

Merchant settlement and cross-border payouts where card fees, cut-offs, and FX slippage bite.
Instant refunds and escrow releases for marketplace/gig platforms.
Corporate clients who want off-hours disbursements with finality.

How to run it well:

Treat the issuer like a core vendor: reserve composition, attestation cadence, redemption SLAs.
Wallet-screening and sanctions at the edge; Travel Rule plumbing where required.
Give merchants explicit opt-in terms and a frictionless on/off-ramp to bank money.
Measure: time-to-settle, fees avoided, chargeback delta, net margin lift.

Why this lane first: You go live in a quarter, learn the flows, and create a controlled surface area while you build muscle for lanes 2 and 3.

Lane 2 — Lead with issuance: Launch a bank-grade payment stablecoin

Where it wins:

Closed-loop ecosystems you already bank (healthcare, payroll/gig, B2B marketplaces, gaming).
Cross-border B2B corridors where you can compress fees and settlement windows.

What it demands:

Reserve policy (short-duration, bankruptcy-remote), real-time transparency, and a run-risk comms plan.
Blacklist/mint/burn controls and a KYC-gated perimeter.
Distribution via PSPs, wallets, and merchant platforms—not just your own app.

Board framing: This is a settlement product with 24/7 APIs and a visible balance-sheet footprint. Govern it like a new deposit line, not a marketing experiment.

Lane 3 — Rewire treasury: Deploy tokenized deposits for liquidity & collateral

Where it wins:

Intraday liquidity: Move cash atomically across subsidiaries; reduce daylight overdrafts.
Collateral mobility: Tokenize claims to free collateral without hopping assets across ledgers.
Corporate cash: Programmable sweeps between operating and investment accounts with real-time triggers.

How to derisk it:

Start inside the bank (treasury, collateral) before exposing to clients.
Choose a permissioned rail or a public L2 with permissioned tokens and identity at the token layer.
Build event-sourced reconciliation: every token move maps to a core event for audit.
Add a narrow PvP pilot with a trusted counterparty (custodian/CCP) before scaling asset classes.

Architecture that passes exams (and actually works)

Programmable edge, authoritative center.
Keep token services (mint/burn, transfer rules) and risk controls at the edge behind APIs. The core remains the golden ledger. Reconcile with an event stream, not nightly batch files.
Identity-first tokenization.
Gate tokens to KYC’d addresses. Enforce sanctions at mint and transfer. Assume examiners will ask how you prevent a “leaky perimeter” on permissioned tokens—have an answer.
Reserves and convertibility rules you can publish.
For stablecoins you issue: short-duration sovereigns, daily holdings, monthly attestations (real-time if you can).
For deposit tokens: explicit convertibility back to core deposits (T+0), plus outage playbooks.
Interoperate before you innovate.
Integrate with existing multi-token networks, PSP rails, and custody stacks. It gets you distribution and rulebooks on day one, and it keeps your team focused on customer value rather than building plumbing.

Risk, compliance, and accounting—the places projects fail

Reg status and charter fit. Decide up front: integrate, issue via a subsidiary, or stay deposit-token-only. Make it a joint sign-off with legal, treasury, and risk—not just innovation.
BSA/AML on new edges. Update customer risk scoring to include wallet behavior. Instrument address screening and Travel Rule once, not per project.
Consumer & merchant disclosures. Redemption rights, fees, failure modes—ship these like you’d ship your cardholder agreement.
Ops risk. Token ↔ core mismatches are the #1 tripwire. Build monitoring and circuit breakers into day one.
Accounting. Stablecoin issuance and deposit tokens touch liquidity buffers and capital planning. Finance must co-own the playbook.

A pragmatic path for Credit Unions

Start with member value: Member-to-member transfers, cross-border remittances, instant refunds.
Use partners: Where custody or digital asset exposure is constrained, route via CUSOs or approved third parties and keep your balance sheet clean.
Program-limited pilots: Cap volumes, define convertibility, and publish plain-English member education.
Measure outcomes: Member NPS, settlement time, and operating cost per transaction.

Roadmaps you can actually run

90–120 days: Payments-first pilot

Select two payment stablecoins and one network/distribution partner.
Add wallet screening and Travel Rule plumbing.
Pilot with 10–20 merchants doing cross-border volume.
KPIs: time-to-settle, FX/fee savings, dispute rate, net margin lift.

120–180 days: Treasury & collateral pilot

Launch internal tokenized-deposit sweeps for treasury.
Stand up a tokenized-collateral workflow with your custodian.
Add a narrow PvP pilot (one asset class, one counterparty).
KPIs: intraday liquidity saved, haircut reduction, fail-rate drop.

6–12 months: Issuer track (if strategic)

Stand up the issuing entity, reserve policy, and attestation cadence.
Mint in sandbox; distribute to a captive ecosystem (payroll, marketplace payouts).
KPIs: float growth, redemption spread (bps), merchant attach rate.

What to tell your board (and mean it)

This is a settlement bet, not a crypto bet. We’re removing time and friction from money movement with bank controls and transparency.
We’ll partner before we build. Distribution and rulebooks matter more than owning a chain.
We’ll show value in two quarters. Payments pilots and treasury pilots create measurable P&L impact; that cash flow funds the bigger move if we choose to issue.

My view on sequencing

If you’re a regional bank or CU, go Lane 1 + Lane 3 first: payments-first pilots for merchant value and deposit-token pilots for internal liquidity. You’ll learn the operational realities without betting the franchise. If you’re a platform bank with captive ecosystems and strong treasury ops, layer Lane 2 (issuance) once you can convert learning into distribution.

The loudest mistake I see: trying to “do blockchain” instead of “doing settlement.” Your CFO doesn’t care about gas fees; they care about fewer cut-offs, lower fails, and capital unlocked from collateral haircuts. Frame it that way and these projects move from innovation theatre to core strategy.

The take

Programmable dollars are becoming the connective tissue between your core ledger and the networks where customers live. The tech is no longer the bottleneck; governance and go-to-market are. Pick your lanes, set hard KPIs, and get live. The institutions that treat this as infrastructure—not a side quest—will quietly own settlement in their markets. And when that happens, deposits, relationships, and margin tend to follow.

I would like to thank my good friend Glendy Kam (Chief Product Officer, Tassat) for reviewing this article and sharing a few notes.

All opinions expressed by the writers are solely their current opinions and do not reflect the views of FinancialColumnist.com, TET Events.