Calgary’s Tetra Digital Trust has formally launched the country’s first officially issued, dollar-backed stablecoin.
As of this week, CADD is now live on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, with Solana forthcoming.
The stablecoin is backed by a consortium of leading Canadian financial institutions and technology companies including Wealthsimple, Shopify, Urbana Corporation, Purpose Unlimited, Shakepay, ATB Financial, National Bank of Canada.
The launch follows a test in December, where CADD became the first Canadian stablecoin to move between two financial institutions: National Bank of Canada and Wealthsimple.
“CADD is issued by a regulated financial institution, with reserves held in Canada, and compliance built in from day one by a firm with Canada’s longest track record of operating regulated digital asset infrastructure,” says Didier Lavallée, founder and chief executive officer of Tetra Digital Group. “It enables faster and more efficient movement of Canadian dollars on-chain within a structure institutions recognize.”
Canada clears more than $400 billion per business day, Lavallée notes, but retail payments remain reliant on infrastructure initially implemented in the 1980s.
The Canadian dollar is one of the most traded currencies globally, says Lavallée, yet there has not been a widely adopted, CAD-denominated digital asset payment rail.
This is a concern as stablecoins become more broadly accepted for payments and settlement globally because a domination of U.S. dollar-denominated assets leaves Canadian businesses without a competitive domestic option to move Canadian dollars on blockchain-based rails.
CADD aims to solve this problem. All funds used to mint CADD are held in trust and dedicated exclusively to redemption, according to Tetra.
The stablecoin enables new institutional use cases to execute on existing Canadian rails, the company says, including 24/7 cross-border settlement, real-time corporate treasury transfers, programmable payments for marketplace payouts, and direct settlement between fintech partners without correspondent banking delays.
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