BNY Mellon launched a tokenized deposit service designed to let institutional clients move funds on-chain while keeping deposits fully backed by fiat.
The bank framed the offering as a regulated alternative to non‑bank digital money, integrating tokenized deposits into internal payment rails that process roughly $2.5 trillion daily to stress‑test settlement flows and reduce counterparty friction.
BNY Mellon’s tokenized deposits are 1:1 representations of bank-held fiat and operate under the bank’s existing protections. The tokens settle on blockchain rails to enable near‑real‑time transfers, while remaining covered by FDIC insurance up to $250,000 per depositor, according to the bank. Early institutional participants named by the bank include Ripple, Citadel and ICE, signalling immediate traction among treasury and market‑infrastructure users.
The bank is using internal volume—its payment and transaction systems that handle about $2.5 trillion a day—to validate operational resilience. That internal adoption is intended both to modernize legacy payment pipelines and to serve as a controlled environment for refining cross‑border payment and treasury management features.
Tokenized credit, money market funds and strategic positioning
BNY Mellon has already extended tokenization beyond deposits. In oct. de 2025 the bank, with Securitize, launched a $100 million tokenized AAA Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) fund to give institutional clients on‑chain access to regulated structured credit. The bank has similarly worked on tokenizing money market funds since a principios de 2025 in partnerships that include other large institutions.
Those initiatives sit alongside development of a custody platform for traditional and digital assets and targeted investments in institutional digital‑asset technology. Together they reflect a strategy to offer issuance, custody, settlement and payment services across the digital asset lifecycle, positioning the bank as a provider of institutional infrastructure rather than a niche crypto counterparty.
Regulation and compliance are presented as core differentiators. By keeping tokenized deposits within a bank balance‑sheet construct and operating under existing insurance and regulatory frameworks, BNY Mellon aims to reduce the regulatory ambiguity that has dogged some stablecoins and non‑bank tokens.
Investors, corporate treasurers and market‑infrastructure participants will be watching the operational rollout and the bank’s ability to scale settlement without increasing systemic risk. Successful internal stress tests and uptake of tokenized credit and money market funds will determine whether tokenized deposits move from a proprietary capability into a broadly adopted plumbing for institutional payments and liquidity management.
