BIS contrasts stablecoins with tokenised deposits

In an August 28, 2026 speech, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) examined whether stablecoins and tokenised bank deposits can support the future monetary system. It highlighted significant differences between privately issued stablecoins and tokenised deposits, which represent commercial-bank money recorded on programmable or distributed-ledger infrastructure.

The BIS focused on five policy issues: maintaining one-to-one value parity with sovereign currency, interoperability between payment systems, anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing (AML/CFT) controls, monetary sovereignty, and regulation.

For stablecoin issuers, the central concerns are whether coins can reliably maintain their stated redemption value, operate safely across payment networks, and meet financial-crime and prudential requirements. These issues also affect users, exchanges and payment firms that rely on stablecoins for settlement or transfers.

Tokenised deposits may offer a route for banks to use programmable technology while preserving the role of regulated bank deposits in the monetary system. The BIS framing indicates that regulatory treatment will likely turn on the underlying claim, redemption arrangements, governance and compliance controls, rather than on whether an instrument uses distributed-ledger technology.

The speech places stablecoins within broader policy concerns about the integrity of money and payments. It does not itself create new legal obligations, but it signals the areas that central banks and regulators are likely to scrutinise when assessing digital-money arrangements.