Goldman, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley frame tokenisation as a revenue expander in Q3 calls

Three of Wall Street’s largest banks used their third-quarter 2026 earnings calls to articulate where they see tokenisation fitting inside existing business lines, with each institution landing on a different part of the value chain. Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon framed the technology as a trading tailwind rather than a threat, drawing a direct analogy to the shift toward electronic equities trading roughly five decades ago, which ultimately grew Goldman’s equities franchise rather than eroding it. Solomon acknowledged that current activity remains “small and at the margin” but pointed to broader distribution channels, new product creation, and potential client expansion as the likely trajectory.

Wells Fargo is further along in one specific application: its tokenised deposit system is already processing cross-border payments in production, with funds settling in two minutes or less. Chief financial officer Michael Santomassimo described volumes as small but flagged a strategic rationale that goes beyond speed. Because Wells Fargo lacks the large international branch network of some global competitors, tokenised deposits offer a route into cross-border payment flows without the capital commitment of physical expansion. The bank is also considering tokenised securities, real-world assets, and crypto trading for wealth clients, though Santomassimo gave no timeline for those services.

Morgan Stanley’s angle is advisory rather than infrastructural. Chief financial officer Sharon Y positioned faster, frictionless asset movement not as a disintermediation risk to wealth managers but as a catalyst for more demand for advice, on the reasoning that greater portfolio flexibility generates more decisions requiring guidance. Goldman, for its part, has been building digital asset infrastructure since at least 2022 through its GS DAP platform and participated in a half-day trial of a tokenisation service run by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in July 2026. The bank is now exploring how to deploy that service at greater scale. None of the three institutions attached a revenue figure to the opportunity, which is a signal worth carrying: these are directional bets being made in earnings language, not formal guidance.