Tetra Trust has launched CADD, billed as the first Canadian-dollar pegged stablecoin issued by a regulated Canadian financial institution, with backing from a consortium that includes Shopify and the National Bank of Canada and a multi-chain deployment built around 24/7 cross-border settlement and corporate treasury use.
The rollout, flagged this week on Tony Edward's Thinking Crypto podcast, has been approved by the Alberta Treasury Board and Finance and is structured around institutional payment rails rather than retail wallet onboarding.
"Tetra Trust launched CADD, the first Canadian-dollar pegged stablecoin from a regulated Canadian financial institution, approved by Alberta Treasury Board and Finance," Edward said. "CADD is aimed at institutional use for 24/7 cross-border settlement, real-time corporate treasury and direct fintech transfers, replacing old batch systems."
The token is live on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 network, and on Tempo, with support for Solana planned. Edward noted the chain mix is unusual for a regulated bank-aligned stablecoin.
"The token is, listen to this, live on Base, Ethereum, Tempo, with Solana support planned. Its launch is backed by the consortium including Shopify and the National Bank of Canada," he said.
Canada has been notably absent from the first wave of regulated fiat-backed stablecoins, with the dollar variants dominated by US-issued products from Circle, PayPal and a small group of bank-led pilots. Tetra Trust's CADD is structured to plug a market gap created by the Trump administration's Genius Act in the US and the European Central Bank's continuing work on the digital euro, both of which have left commercial CAD-denominated payment flows reliant on FX-routed USD stablecoins for a large share of cross-border settlement.
The Shopify involvement matters for adoption. The Ottawa-listed e-commerce platform, which sits behind a substantial share of Canadian and global merchant volume, has already begun integrating USD stablecoin checkouts at scale through Coinbase. A live CAD-denominated stablecoin gives Canadian sellers a direct on-chain settlement asset for receivables and payables without crossing through US dollars and back. The National Bank of Canada's involvement gives the product a domestic systemic banking reference point and access to corporate treasury clients that had previously been blocked from holding token-based dollar reserves.
For the broader stablecoin market, CADD's launch fits into a wave of regulated fiat-pegged token issuance. Western Union has just deployed its USDPT stablecoin on Solana through Anchorage Digital across more than 200 countries. The American Bankers Association has asked to pause Genius Act stablecoin rules for 60 days while incumbents finalise their compliance frameworks. The European Central Bank has locked in tap-to-pay standards for the digital euro with three European bodies, and MoneyGram has extended its Stellar pact to push stablecoin cash rails from Colombia into El Salvador.
For Canadian regulators, the CADD launch is also a test case for whether the Alberta-led approval framework holds up at scale. Provincial financial-services authorities in Canada have historically led on innovation but typically defer to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions for systemic banking oversight. A federally registered trust company issuing a stablecoin under provincial approval, with one of Canada's Big Six banks and one of its biggest listed companies inside the consortium, will set the template for how the next round of regulated CAD-denominated tokens are stood up.
The immediate test will be live volume. Tetra Trust has not disclosed a target float or projected daily settlement volume for CADD, but the consortium's involvement implies treasury, payroll and merchant-settlement use cases will dominate the early flow before retail wallets become a meaningful share.