Canton Network Hosts First-Ever HSBC Tokenised Deposit Pilot: Details

HSBC has successfully completed a pilot simulating the issuance, transfer, and atomic settlement of its Tokenised Deposit Service (TDS) on the Canton Network, marking the first time the bank's tokenised deposits were issued and used on a public blockchain.

The pilot, conducted through HSBC's Global Payments Solutions (GPS) business, tested how tokenised deposits could be settled atomically against other digital assets on Canton-enabled applications. It also demonstrated interoperability by connecting HSBC's internal deposit ledger with an external blockchain network, a step that has direct implications for how institutional finance could eventually plug into public blockchain infrastructure.

Manish Kohli, Head of Global Payments Solutions at HSBC, said the focus is on "building secure, interoperable capabilities that enable clients to move money more efficiently across different environments, while maintaining the trust and regulatory standards expected of a global bank."

What Did the HSBC Canton Network Pilot Actually Test?

The pilot covered three core functions: issuing tokenised deposits on the Canton Network, transferring them between parties, and settling them atomically against other digital assets. 

Atomic settlement, for those unfamiliar with the term, means that both legs of a transaction, the asset being sent and the payment being received, complete at exactly the same time. There is no gap where one party has delivered and the other has not. In traditional finance, that gap is a source of counterparty risk.

The pilot also explored how Canton could connect to additional settlement rails, extending what is known as delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement across both cash and asset legs. DvP is a standard settlement mechanism in capital markets designed to eliminate the risk that one side of a trade is completed without the other.

What Is HSBC's Tokenised Deposit Service?

HSBC's TDS allows corporate clients to convert fiat deposits into digital tokens on a 1:1 basis, then transfer them instantly on HSBC's ledger. The service currently supports five major currencies: USD, GBP, EUR, HKD, and SGD. It is built to support 24/7 real-time settlement and programmable payments, which allows businesses to automate payment conditions in ways that standard wire transfers cannot.

The Canton pilot represents an extension of this existing service onto a public blockchain for the first time.

One of the core findings of the HSBC pilot was that interoperability, the ability of different blockchain networks and ledgers to communicate and settle with each other, is a prerequisite for scaling tokenised finance.

Yuval Rooz, CEO of Digital Asset and co-founder of the Canton Network, noted that tokenised deposits are gaining traction across capital markets, corporate banking, and treasury, and that Canton is "quickly becoming a primary network for deployment, enabling tokenized deposits to move seamlessly across institutions and applications while maintaining privacy, control and interoperability."

What Is the Canton Network?

Canton Network is a public, permissionless blockchain co-created by Digital Asset. Its primary design feature is configurable privacy, which means institutions can transact on a public chain without exposing sensitive financial data to the broader network. That addresses one of the main reasons banks have historically avoided public blockchains: the compliance and data visibility risks that come with full transparency.

The network already includes a substantial list of institutional participants. DTCC, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan (via its Kinexys platform), BNP Paribas, and now HSBC are among the names active on Canton. As of early April 2026, the network has over 40 Super Validators, which sit at the top of Canton's trust and governance hierarchy, and more than 800 validators in total.

How Does Canton's Token Model Work?

Canton runs on a burn-and-mint equilibrium (BME) model using its native token, $CC. Every time an institution settles a transaction or interacts with the Global Synchronizer, Canton's core privacy layer, a usage fee is paid by burning $CC at an on-chain conversion rate that Super Validators update every 10 minutes. Those burned tokens are permanently removed from supply.

New $CC is minted as rewards for Super Validators, standard validators, and application builders, distributed based on actual contributions to the network. There is no pre-mine and no venture capital allocation. 

As of April 13, 2026, live data from CoinMarketCap showed circulating supply at approximately 38.3 billion $CC, priced between $0.147 and $0.148, with 24-hour burn volume recently exceeding $6.7 million.

The Canton Foundation announced on April 8 that the network has burned 2,898,443,014 $CC, worth roughly $417 million at the time of the announcement. That represents approximately 10% of circulating supply removed in under two years of meaningful operation, driven entirely by institutional usage rather than a scheduled burn event or governance vote.

Which Institutions Are Now Super Validators on Canton?

In March 2026, Canton added several major names as Super Validators, including:

• Visa
• Circle
• Apollo Global
• Fireblocks
• QCP Group
• Zenith
• Meshpay

Each Super Validator secures the chain, validates transactions, and participates in governance with an assigned voting weight, typically 10 or 5 depending on their tier.

Conclusion

The HSBC Canton pilot confirmed that a major global bank can issue tokenised deposits on a public blockchain, settle them atomically against digital assets, and connect an internal deposit ledger to an external network without sacrificing regulatory compliance. 

HSBC's TDS already operates across five currencies with real-time, programmable settlement. The Canton Network, with over 800 validators, $417 million in cumulative burns tied to actual institutional usage, and Super Validators including Visa, Circle, and Goldman Sachs, provided the infrastructure to support it. The pilot did not announce a product launch. It demonstrated that the technical and regulatory pieces for institutional tokenised settlement are already in place.

Resources

1. Press release: HSBC Announces Successful Tokenised Deposit Pilot on the Canton Network

2. HashKey Group X announcement - Original announcement of HashKey Cloud validator node and Canton collaboration

3. Canton Foundation (@CantonFdn) on X — Original announcement of Ledger joining as Super Validator, February 19, 2026

4. Canton Foundation (@CantonFdn) on X Official announcement of the 2.9 billion $CC burn milestone on April 8, 2026

5. Cantonscan Live Canton Network explorer with real-time burn data, circulating supply, and transaction metrics

6. Visa Official press release detailing Visa's Super Validator role and stablecoin strategy on Canton Network, published March 25, 2026

7. Circle Blog post announcing USDCx availability on Canton via Circle xReserve