By Maghnus Mareneck
Tokenized deposits stopped being a research project a while ago.
JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform is settling more than USD 7 billion a day and has processed over $4 trillion since launch. Citi integrated its Token Services platform with 24/7 USD Clearing last September, giving institutional clients multibank cross-border payments that settle around the clock. And JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, and Wells Fargo are now building a shared tokenized deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting a launch in the first half of 2027.
Credit unions may lack the trillions in daily payment flows to justify building something like Kinexys on their own. However, tokenized deposit decisions made by market leaders about data formats, settlement standards, and interoperability tend to calcify. Credit unions that sit this round out will spend the next decade adapting to rules written by commercial institutions that were never optimized for member-owned finance.
The Momentum Driver
What’s driving the momentum industry-wide is the use cases unlocked by tokenized deposits. A tokenized deposit is a bank liability, still on the issuing institution’s balance sheet and inside its existing compliance and customer relationship that is fully transferable and programmable. Both stablecoins and tokenized deposits can be spread across banks, earn yield, and be loaned out; the advantage of a tokenized deposit is that the credit union keeps the depositor relationship and the accompanying data, retains FDIC insurance, and they can pay interest.
For an industry that has spent two decades building compliance muscle, tokenized deposits offer a way to modernize settlement without asking depositors, examiners, or share insurance to accept something unfamiliar. Commercial banks are exploring tokenized deposits for corporate treasury use cases, like instant intraday liquidity, cross-border settlement, repo.
Credit unions can benefit from tokenized deposits as a method to provide a faster, digital-first member experience. Members already expect money to move at the speed of everything else in their lives, and tokenized deposits give credit unions a way to deliver that experience.
Three Main Buckets
The practical value of tokenized deposits for credit unions is in three main buckets:
- Settlement speed. Internal transfers, or transfers across a shared ledger run by a CUSO, can clear in seconds instead of overnight batches.
- Programmability. A disbursement or share draft can be coded to release only when a specific condition is met, useful for loan disbursements or escrow-like transactions, without custom middleware built for each case.
- Liquidity. 24/7 settlement of liquidity eliminates the need to wait for ACH windows or correspondent banking hours to move funds, thus providing greater flexibility.
Here’s what I’d prioritize if I were running a credit union right now and I wanted to take advantage of digital asset transformation.
Three Things to Prioritize
First, become aware of the regulatory calendar to understand the frameworks available today. The NCUA issued a proposed rule in February 2026, and a supplemental proposal in May on stablecoin issuance by credit union subsidiaries. The GENIUS Act will take effect on Jan. 18, 2027, or earlier depending on regulator progress.
Second, explore CUSO-based solutions. The NCUA’s proposed framework already points to CUSOs as the vehicle for this, specifically so multiple smaller credit unions can pool resources into one shared entity to reduce cost and overhead. Stablecore, Circuit, and Curql launched an early-access digital asset program in June 2026 with three credit unions representing $25 billion in combined assets to modernize member offerings.
Third, start with the lower-regulatory-bar option first. The NCUA currently treats tokenized share accounts as distinct from payment stablecoins, which opens a narrower, faster path to tokenizing a member’s share balance than stablecoin issuance. Pressure-test that path with a narrow use case, like faster internal transfers between accounts, to evaluate efficacy.
No Need to Win Race
Credit unions do not need to win the race to build the first tokenized deposit network. Commercial banks are heavily investing in developing tokenized deposit networks for institutional treasury clients. Credit unions risk losing depositors to these commercial players that offer faster, digital-first experiences enabled by tokenized deposits. Credit unions cannot afford to wait until commercial banks set the state of play.
The credit unions that come out ahead here will be the ones that picked the right consortium, asked their core provider for options, and started piloting a use case in 2026 instead of waiting for a broad mandate in 2029.
Maghnus Mareneck is Co-CEO of Cosmos Labs, the company behind the Cosmos blockchain ecosystem, the largest network of blockchains in the world. He leads go-to-market and partnerships for Cosmos and has worked in the cryptocurrency industry since 2013. He previously co-founded Skip Protocol, which was acquired by the Interchain Foundation in 2024, and holds degrees in Economics and Computer Science from The Wharton School.
