Deloitte Canada and Stablecorp have announced a collaboration to develop stablecoin infrastructure aimed at Canadian financial institutions. The partnership centers on integrating Stablecorp’s Canadian dollar-pegged digital asset, QCAD, into payment and settlement workflows for institutional clients. The announcement was made on Monday, with both companies signaling that the initiative is designed to prepare banks and other institutions for a future regulatory environment.
Stablecorp is a Toronto-based fintech company and the issuer of QCAD, a fiat-backed stablecoin engineered to maintain a one-to-one value with the Canadian dollar. Soumak Chatterjee, a partner in Deloitte Canada’s financial services division, described the effort as helping institutions get ready for stablecoin adoption once a formal regulatory regime is in place. No specific bank partners or rollout timelines were disclosed in the announcement.
The companies outlined several potential applications for the technology, including continuous around-the-clock payment capabilities and improved settlement efficiency relative to traditional banking systems. They also highlighted blockchain-based recordkeeping as a tool for transaction transparency. Additionally, both firms pointed to the possibility of new financial products being built on tokenized infrastructure as the market matures.
The collaboration emerges as the Canadian federal government moves to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. Bill C-15, a budget implementation bill introduced last November, includes provisions for regulating fiat-backed digital assets at the federal level. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has previously expressed skepticism toward crypto, has more recently acknowledged that the underlying technologies could improve financial stability and support more efficient payment services.
The Bank of Canada has separately called for clearer rules governing stablecoins, arguing that regulatory certainty is essential to modernizing the country’s payment systems. The central bank has stated that any framework should require stablecoins to be fully backed by high-quality liquid assets and redeemable at par. It has also warned that delays in establishing such rules could leave Canada behind other jurisdictions that have moved more quickly.
Global momentum around stablecoin regulation has been building, particularly in the United States, where the passage of the GENIUS Act for payment stablecoins last summer marked a significant legislative milestone. The Canadian dollar stablecoin market currently remains limited in scale compared to the dominant US dollar segment, where Tether‘s USDT and Circle‘s USDC account for the vast majority of global stablecoin supply and usage.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada shelved its plans for a central bank digital currency in September 2024, following more than seven years of research that included a public consultation process drawing nearly 90,000 responses. The decision leaves private-sector stablecoin initiatives, such as the Deloitte-Stablecorp partnership, as a primary avenue for digital currency development in the country. The regulatory path ahead under Bill C-15 will likely shape how quickly such projects can move from pilot concepts to live institutional deployment.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
