OSFI Confirms Tokenised Deposits Are Legally Equivalent to Traditional Deposits

Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) has published a supervisory statement affirming that recording a deposit on a blockchain does not alter its legal character. The core position is that the technology underlying a financial product does not determine its legal nature, and tokenised deposits are therefore not legally distinct from conventional deposits. Critically, this is a supervisory interpretation of the Bank Act rather than a legislative change, and OSFI itself recommends that banks seek independent legal advice where appropriate.

Two material gaps remain. First, the statement carries no force of law on its own, leaving institutions to calibrate how much weight to place on a regulator’s interpretive guidance versus a statutory footing. Second, deposit insurance sits outside OSFI’s remit and falls under the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC). The CDIC Act’s deposit definition appears technology-neutral, but the corporation has not explicitly addressed tokenised deposits, meaning a meaningful piece of the regulatory picture remains unresolved.

The contrast with the United States is instructive. The GENIUS Act includes a provision explicitly allowing banks to use distributed ledgers to represent deposits as digital assets on their books and records, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) proposed rulemaking under that Act would codify that deposit insurance applies regardless of the recording technology. Canada’s approach is faster but softer; the US route is slower yet carries greater statutory durability. For operators planning cross-border tokenised deposit infrastructure, the regulatory floor beneath Canadian activity is thinner than OSFI’s confident framing might suggest.