{"id":53673,"date":"2026-05-20T21:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/53673\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:51:08","slug":"calgary-based-fintech-launches-canadian-dollar-backed-stablecoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/53673\/","title":{"rendered":"Calgary-based fintech launches Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calgary-based Tetra Trust Co. has launched what it claims to be the first Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin issued by a financial institution, introducing another domestic alternative to the U.S. dollar-denominated digital currencies widely used for payments and settlements.<\/p>\n

The Alberta Treasury Board and Finance approved CADD, the Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Tetra, earlier this month. This comes months after Stablecorp Digital Currencies Inc. received approval<\/a> to launch its Canadian-dollar stablecoin, dubbed QCAD.<\/p>\n

Both CADD and QCAD are backed<\/a> with 1:1 Canadian dollar reserves located in Canada.<\/p>\n

Canadian financial institutions and technology companies like Tetra Digital Group, Urbana Corp., Wealthsimple Inc., Purpose Unlimited, Shakepay, ATB Financial, National Bank of Canada and Shopify Inc. are among Tetra\u2019s investors and CADD holders, it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all saw use-cases within their environment,\u201d Didier Lavall\u00e9e, founder and CEO of Tetra Digital Group, said in an interview. \u201cThey wanted to deploy stablecoins or are currently utilizing U.S.-denominated stablecoins, and they\u2019re looking to bring in a Canadian token.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts say stablecoins are the key to real-time trading in tokenized fi<\/a>n<\/a>ancial assets<\/a>, and also have the potential to unlock efficiencies for financial institutions.<\/p>\n

Currently, most stablecoin transactions around the world are business-to-business settlements, Lavall\u00e9e said.<\/p>\n

In the future, stablecoins can serve as the settlement layer for tokenized financial assets, such as tokenized equities and derivatives, Soumak Chatterjee, partner in payments and digital assets at Deloitte Canada, said in a recent interview<\/a>. \u201cIf stablecoins get mainstream adoption as a mechanism for moving value and money, you\u2019ll suddenly see liquidity being unlocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tokenized assets tout the benefits of instant settlement, but that can\u2019t happen if they\u2019re still traded with fiat currency. Stablecoins will allow tokenized assets to settle in real time, Lavall\u00e9e said. \u201cIt\u2019s the gate to unlocking all tokenization, because it\u2019s the settlement layer that is going to be crucial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury efficiencies<\/p>\n

Stablecoins also have the potential to unlock treasury efficiencies and speed up settlement for financial institutions that regularly settle large transactions. Currently, financial institutions need to position cash overnight to settle transactions with other institutions and the Bank of Canada. Buying government bonds or ETFs takes a full business day to transact, said Lavall\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always an amount of capital that\u2019s not positioned perfectly, and that\u2019s a pretty painful activity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When large institutions need to settle funds in the order of billions over long weekends, nothing is earned on that capital just sitting there, Lavall\u00e9e added. Stablecoins can make treasury cycles more efficient and ensure every dollar is deployed immediately.<\/p>\n

There are no shortage of online platforms that move funds between different countries\u2019 stablecoins and fiat currency, but there is still a challenge in domestic interoperability.<\/p>\n

While clients expect foreign exchange services to charge a fee, exchanging between stablecoins of the same denomination needs to happen for free, Lavall\u00e9e said. This becomes more important when Canadian stablecoins grow beyond just CADD and QCAD; the industry needs to find a way to make domestic exchanges work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a problem around fungibility,\u201d Lavall\u00e9e said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you believe the concept that this is digital money, you shouldn\u2019t be incurring transactional fees. \u2026 Nobody in the ecosystem will try to exchange $1 for four quarters with a transaction fee.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary-based Tetra Trust Co. has launched what it claims to be the first Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin issued by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,23814,11785,23815,23813],"class_list":["post-53673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-calgary","tag-digital-currencies","tag-stablecoins","tag-tetra-trust-co","tag-tokenization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}