Citi will launch tokenized deposit remittances for Japanese corporate clients by the end of 2026. The bank becomes the first foreign institution to offer the service inside Japan. Treasurers
Citigroup will begin offering tokenized deposit remittances to corporate clients in Japan before the end of 2026, making it the first foreign bank to bring the service to the Japanese market. The plan was outlined by Shahmir Khaliq, Citi’s global head of services, in remarks to Nikkei. The bank converts commercial deposits into digital tokens on a distributed ledger, which lets Japanese companies move foreign currency between Japan and Citi hubs in five countries at any hour, weekends and public holidays included. Corporate treasurers reach the service through CitiDirect, the platform they already use for day-to-day banking, so the blockchain layer never surfaces on their end.
A tokenized deposit is not a cryptocurrency. It is an electronic representation of money a company already holds at Citi, recorded on a ledger that can settle around the clock rather than only during banking hours. When a Japanese firm instructs a transfer, the token representing its deposit moves instantly to the receiving hub, and the underlying balances update in real time. The client sees none of this machinery.
There is no wallet to fund, no private key to safeguard, no network node to run. Citi handles the infrastructure and exposes only the familiar CitiDirect interface, which is the design choice that makes the product usable by treasury teams that have no interest in operating crypto rails.
Traditional cross-border payments stop when correspondent banks close. To bridge a weekend or a holiday, a company that needs funds available on the other side has to send money in advance and let it sit idle, which locks up working capital and creates cash-flow gaps at exactly the moments when liquidity matters. Citi’s tokenized deposits collapse that waiting period. Because settlement runs 24/7/365, treasurers no longer pre-position cash ahead of a Friday cut-off or a national holiday, and the capital that used to sit trapped stays available. That directly lowers corporate funding costs, and for large multinationals running continuous foreign-currency flows through Tokyo, the saved days of float add up quickly.
~$6T Total funds Citi moves globally every day ~$1B Tokenized deposits already settling daily 5 Connected hubs: US, UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland 24/7/365 Settlement window with no cut-off hours CitiDirect Single access point, no wallets or keys End of 2026 Target launch in the Japanese marketCiti is not switching on a prototype. Out of the roughly $6 trillion the bank moves in total funds every day, tokenized deposit transactions already account for about $1 billion daily across its global network. That is under 0.02% of Citi’s daily flow, which puts the “live system” framing in perspective: the rail works, but it still carries a rounding-error share of what the bank actually moves.
Japan is an extension of a live system rather than a first attempt, which changes the risk profile for the corporate clients being asked to adopt it. The five-hub footprint matters here too, because it maps onto the corridors Japanese exporters and multinationals actually use, and it means a Tokyo treasury can settle into New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Dublin without leaving the same rail.
Japan has built one of the clearest legal frameworks for digital assets anywhere, and that clarity is why Citi chose it for the first foreign-bank rollout. Under the Payment Services Act, tokenized deposits count as electronic representations of commercial bank money, which means a bank does not need a separate specialized license to issue them. That single legal treatment removes the ambiguity that stalls similar projects in other jurisdictions. It also explains why Japanese banks, not just foreign entrants, are moving on-chain at the same time. In May 2026, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party released a strategy paper treating stablecoins and tokenized deposits as core financial infrastructure, warning that dollar-based stablecoins could dominate cross-border settlement without domestic alternatives.
Japan’s three largest banking groups are building their own on-chain infrastructure in parallel, and part of the motivation is defensive. MUFG, Mizuho, and SMBC have announced a joint stablecoin initiative for commercial transactions targeted for March 2027, and they set up a shared governance council specifically to keep corporate deposits from leaking to unregulated, non-bank stablecoin issuers. A separate coalition of around 40 banks, led by DeCurret DCP and GMO Aozora Net Bank, is preparing an interbank remittance pilot on DCJPY, a tokenized deposit network backed by segregated fiat reserves. In August 2026, MUFG began testing a pilot for Japanese Government Bond repurchase agreements on the institutional Canton Network, aiming for instant automated settlement in one of the world’s largest debt markets. These domestic efforts do not directly overlap with Citi’s service, which handles foreign-currency flows for companies that already bank with Citi rather than domestic yen settlement, so the two occupy adjacent lanes rather than the same one.
InitiativeBackersStageMegabank stablecoin allianceMUFG, Mizuho, SMBCTargeted Mar 2027DCJPY networkDeCurret DCP, GMO Aozora, ~40 banksPilot in prepJGB repo settlementMUFG on Canton NetworkTesting since Aug 2026The Japan launch runs on the Citi Integrated Digital Assets Platform, the unified infrastructure the bank uses across its tokenization work. Several pieces of that stack went live earlier in 2026 and give the Japan service a wider context. In June 2026, Citi rolled out Digital Depositary Receipts, tokenizing private-market equities such as stakes in late-stage startups through a partnership with Switzerland’s SIX Digital Exchange, and acting as digital custodian for institutional wealth clients. Citi was also one of 17 global banks selected to support Swift’s permissioned Layer-2 network, built with Consensys, which is meant to connect traditional banking books with public and private Ethereum-based systems. In the US, Citi is working with JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America under The Clearing House on a shared commercial-bank tokenized deposit network slated for mid-2027.
Citi’s own research frames why the bank is spending on all of this. The Citi Institute’s Tokenization 2030 report puts the global tokenized asset market at roughly $17 billion today and projects a base case of $5.5 trillion by 2030, with a bull case of $8.2 trillion. The report identifies regulated on-chain money as the main driver, and expects global stablecoin issuance to reach $1.9 trillion by 2030. These are the bank’s projections rather than settled outcomes, and the gap between the base and bull figures shows how much still depends on regulation and adoption.
Today $17B Global tokenized assets → 2030 base case $5.5T Global tokenized assets 2030 bull case $8.2T Global tokenized assetsStablecoin issuance is projected separately to reach $1.9 trillion by 2030, the catalyst Citi cites for the wider tokenization curve.
For a treasurer running yen and foreign-currency flows through Japan, the immediate change is the disappearance of the weekend and holiday float. Cash that had to be parked in advance becomes deployable, and the funding buffer that companies kept against settlement delays shrinks. For Citi’s competitors, the pressure is now on timing, because a live product with a five-hub network raises the bar for any bank still running pilots.
The harder problem sits one layer up. Citi’s US shared deposit network with JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America is not due until mid-2027, and it points to the question that will define this phase: whether tokenized deposits issued by different banks, on different ledgers, in different countries can actually settle against each other. A Citi token in Tokyo, a DCJPY balance across 40 Japanese banks, and a Clearing House network in the US each work well on their own. Making them interoperable, rather than building faster silos, is the piece none of these projects has finished, and it is where the next round of announcements will land.
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