Points of Focus

• McKinsey says tokenized bank deposits process over $4 trillion annually, far exceeding stablecoin payment activity.
• Its report highlights Chainlink CCIP and Canton Network as leading blockchain interoperability solutions.
• McKinsey sees 2026 as a pivotal year for proving which interoperability model can enable broader adoption of tokenized money.

A May 2026 McKinsey report by partners Matt Higginson and Uzayr Jeenah places stablecoins as one layer of a three-tier monetary architecture, naming Chainlink CCIP, the Canton Network, and the UK’s Great British Tokenized Deposit (GBTD) initiative among the infrastructure shaping how institutional money moves on-chain.

Tokenized deposits already dwarf stablecoin payment volumes

Titled ‘Beyond Stablecoins: The Emerging Architecture of On-Chain Money,’ the report finds that tokenized bank deposits already facilitate more than $4 trillion in annual transfers, far exceeding the $390 billion in organic stablecoin payment activity recorded across 2025. JPMorgan’s Kinexys alone accounts for an estimated $1 trillion of those flows through internal treasury movements and interbank settlements. 

Stablecoins dominate headlines. But McKinsey's latest research points to a much larger shift already underway.

Major banks are already moving more than $4 trillion annually through #tokeniseddeposit infrastructure. An order of magnitude larger than #stablecoins, and embedded…

— Quant (@quantnetwork) May 28, 2026

Meanwhile, stablecoin circulation has remained just above $300 billion since mid-2025, with around 85% concentrated in Circle and Tether.

Three interoperability models — and where the named projects fit

McKinsey identifies three interoperability paths to connect fragmented tokenized deposit rails: 

• The first, “shared mainlands,” places commercial bank deposits and wholesale central bank money on a common ledger. The UK’s GBTD initiative falls into this category alongside the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agora.
• The second model uses orchestration layers that connect existing payment rails with tokenized assets without requiring a shared ledger. Swift’s platform and Partior’s network are highlighted as examples.
• The third model, ‘bridges between islands,’ enables separate blockchains to exchange value while maintaining privacy and control. McKinsey’s exhibit specifically identifies Chainlink CCIP and the Canton Network as leading examples of this approach. 

Three distinct interoperability models highlighted in McKinsey report, Source: McKinsey

McKinsey spotlights Chainlink CCIP as the critical bridge for tokenized deposit interoperability

McKinsey highlights CCIP within the bridges model because it allows tokenized deposits on proprietary bank chains to move securely to public networks without a shared ledger. That capability is already being deployed and tested in institutional settings. A January 2026 Swift initiative involving BNP Paribas, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Société Générale – FORGE completed DvP settlement of tokenized bonds across blockchain and traditional systems, extending the prior Swift-Chainlink-UBS collaboration under Singapore’s MAS Project Guardian. 

Institutional adoption has been accompanied by compliance milestones. In April 2026, Deloitte & Touche LLP completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination covering Chainlink Data Feeds and CCIP, making it the only oracle platform holding SOC 2 Type 1, SOC 2 Type 2, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 concurrently. On May 12, 2026, DTCC announced that its Collateral AppChain would integrate Chainlink’s Runtime Environment for 24/7 collateral workflows, targeting Q4 2026 production inside a network that processed $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions in 2025.

Today we announced progress toward our goal of advancing 24/7 collateral mobility. DTCC’s Collateral AppChain, a shared infrastructure platform for collateral, will leverage the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) and @chainlink data standard to enable near real-time collateral… pic.twitter.com/pJxBBmVWAr

— DTCC (@The_DTCC) May 12, 2026

Despite growing momentum, most of the $4T+ in tokenized deposits still operates within closed banking networks. The report says 2026 will be the key year in determining which interoperability models can overcome regulatory, governance, and settlement challenges to achieve global scale.