Canada Launches First Regulated Digital Dollar, CADD, Targeting 24/7 Institutional Settlement
Tetra Trust launched Canada’s first regulated stablecoin, CADD, on May 4, backed by Shopify and the National Bank of Canada among its founding institutional supporters. The token is pegged 1-to-1 to the Canadian dollar and designed for institutional settlement at any hour of the week, a function that existing bank wire systems cannot perform.
CoinDesk reported the launch May 4. CADD is positioned as a direct challenge to the dominance of U.S. dollar stablecoins, primarily Tether (USDT) and USDC (USDC), in Canadian cross-border commerce and corporate treasury operations.
What CADD Is Designed To Do
CADD is a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a fixed value against a reference asset.
In CADD’s case, the reference is the Canadian dollar. Each token is fully backed by Canadian dollar reserves held at Tetra Trust, a federally regulated trust company, providing a legal custody structure that most earlier stablecoin issuers lacked.
The product targets three specific use cases, according to the CoinDesk account: 24/7 cross-border settlement for import and export trades, real-time corporate treasury management between subsidiaries across time zones, and direct fintech integrations for payment processors and lenders.
Current cross-border transactions between Canadian businesses and international counterparties typically settle through the SWIFT banking network, a process that can take one to three business days and cannot process on weekends or public holidays. CADD on a blockchain layer settles in seconds at any time, eliminating the float cost and counterparty exposure that accumulates during those delays.
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Why the Backing Matters
Shopify’s participation carries particular significance.
The Ottawa-based e-commerce platform processes payments for millions of merchants in Canada and internationally, and its involvement suggests CADD may be integrated into merchant settlement workflows rather than remaining a purely interbank instrument. National Bank of Canada’s support provides regulatory credibility, as a Schedule I chartered bank’s endorsement signals comfort with the product’s legal structure under Canadian financial law.
The combination of a regulated custodian, a major technology company, and a chartered bank as launch partners puts CADD structurally ahead of most stablecoin issuers that launched in earlier cycles without institutional backing.
Comparable projects in other jurisdictions, including Singapore’s Project Ubin and the European Central Bank’s digital euro pilots, required years of regulatory negotiation before reaching institutional adoption. CADD arrives with that infrastructure already in place.
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The Competitive Backdrop
U.S. dollar stablecoins have dominated cross-border cryptocurrency settlement globally since 2019, with Tether (USDT)‘s USDT alone accounting for more than $150 billion in market capitalization and daily volumes that regularly exceed Bitcoin’s.
Canadian importers and exporters using cryptocurrency rails for settlement have historically had to convert CAD to a USD stablecoin, absorb the foreign exchange cost, transact, and convert back, adding friction and currency risk to every cycle.
A CAD-denominated stablecoin removes that round trip for Canadian-counterparty transactions. The U.S.
Senate’s ongoing effort to pass a formal stablecoin regulatory framework, which has stalled repeatedly since 2023, gives Canada a narrow window to establish its own regulated product before U.S. dollar alternatives gain clearer legal footing and potentially displace local currency instruments further.
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What Comes Next
Tetra Trust has not publicly disclosed a launch timeline for retail access or a target on-chain transaction volume for CADD’s first year. The institutional focus suggests the product will scale through bank and fintech integrations rather than consumer wallets in its early phase.
Key milestones to watch include whether Shopify deploys CADD for any merchant-facing settlement product, whether other Schedule I banks follow National Bank in backing the token, and whether Canadian financial regulators issue formal guidance on stablecoin reserve requirements that could affect CADD’s operating model. The latter is the highest-risk variable, as regulatory clarity can arrive in either a permissive or restrictive form.
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