CADD Goes Live: Canada's First Bank-Issued CAD Stablecoin Launches on Three Chains — None of Them XRPL

XRPL Canada – May 12, 2026

On May 4, 2026, Tetra Trust Company, via its agent CAD Digital Inc., announced that CADD, a payment stablecoin backed 1:1 by Canadian dollars, has received regulatory approval from Alberta Treasury Board and Finance. It is the first Canadian-dollar stablecoin issued by a regulated Canadian financial institution. It launched simultaneously on three blockchains — Ethereum, Base, and Tempo — with Solana to follow. The XRP Ledger was not among them. For a publication covering XRPL adoption in Canada, that absence is part of the story.

This article walks through what CADD is, the regulatory structure that enabled it, the institutional consortium behind it, and what the chain selection signals for XRPL's positioning in Canadian payments infrastructure.

What CADD Is

CADD is a fiat-backed payment stablecoin. If someone holds one token, the company legally owes them one Canadian dollar, said Lori Stein, co-lead of the fintech group at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, a firm that also serves as regulatory counsel to Tetra Trust Company. It is a direct liability of the financial institution. All funds used to mint CADD are held in trust and dedicated exclusively to redemption, aligning the CADD program with institutional expectations around asset protection, transparency, and compliance.

Reserves sit inside the Canadian banking system. The stablecoin is pegged one-to-one with the Canadian dollar, with reserves held entirely at Canadian financial institutions, including tier-one banks.

Transparency is structured around recurring third-party verification. According to Lavallée, an independent financial auditor will conduct monthly reviews of the reserve holdings, with public attestations released regularly. The company also expects random compliance checks as part of the regulatory process.

The Regulatory Structure

CADD is the first Canadian stablecoin to use a licensed trust company as its issuance vehicle. Tetra Trust is registered under Alberta's Loan and Trust Corporations Act and meets the requirements of a qualified custodian under National Instrument 81-102 and 31-103. As a reporting entity and issuer under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, Tetra Trust meets all regulatory requirements for anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing measures.

That structure matters because it sidesteps the legal question that has shaped Canadian stablecoin development for years. Tetra said CADD avoided some of the barriers involved with securities. Since it is issued by a regulated trust company — a financial institution that holds assets on others' behalf under strict legal obligations — it falls outside of securities laws.

The federal framework that would eventually govern stablecoins directly is not yet in force. There is no dedicated federal law specifically for stablecoins yet, and while the Stablecoin Act was passed two months ago, it won't go into effect until 2027. Until then, Lavallée says Tetra Digital Group believes it has the "right to distribute broadly at the federal level" until there is more clarity under the Stablecoin Act.

The provincial-trust-company route is therefore the bridge Tetra is using to operate at national scale before federal rules take effect. CADD marks the first stablecoin in Canada issued by a licensed trust company. It reflects a shift toward domestically regulated digital asset infrastructure aligned with Canada's evolving regulatory standard for stablecoins.

The Consortium

CADD is backed by a group of established Canadian financial and technology firms. The Calgary, Alberta-based Tetra raised $10 million for the project in September 2025, with backing from Shopify, Wealthsimple, Purpose Unlimited, Shakepay, ATB Financial, National Bank of Canada and Urbana Corporation, which holds a majority stake. The same consortium is also supporting the launch.

The launch was preceded by an institutional proof point. The launch follows a testnet phase in December 2025, where CADD became the first Canadian stablecoin to move between two financial institutions, National Bank of Canada and Wealthsimple. This highlighted CADD's ability to support real-world institutional flows within a compliant framework.

A broader design partner program extends the institutional footprint beyond the equity consortium. Tetra said it is expanding its CADD design partner program with new participants beyond its initial investors to help build and evaluate new use cases for CADD. The new partners include Canadian FinTech firms like Aquanow, Capco, Cybrid, Float Financial, KOHO, Sling Money, Tempo, and WealthONE.

The Use Cases Tetra Is Targeting

Tetra is positioning CADD for institutional money movement rather than retail crypto demand. Because it is denominated in Canadian dollars and governed under Canadian law, CADD enables institutional use cases such as 24/7 cross-border settlement, real-time corporate treasury transfers, programmable payments for marketplace payouts and direct settlement between FinTech partners without correspondent banking delays.

The market context Tetra cites to justify the launch is the gap between Canadian payment volumes and the infrastructure carrying them. Canada clears roughly $424 billion per business day on legacy rails that are still dependent on batch infrastructure first deployed in the 1980s, the firm said.

The cross-border angle is sharpened by the dominance of USD stablecoins in any onchain activity involving Canadian counterparties. This specifically benefits users who may be using American stablecoins to purchase Canadian assets, and are bearing FX fees by doing so, says Lavallée. "We do see operational expenses in terms of using U.S. dollars. So one is essentially better alignment with their business," says Lavallée. "As they do commerce or cross border activity they want to use their native currency…. as opposed to having to go to the U.S dollars just for the sake of using stablecoin rails."

The Chain Selection

CADD launched on three chains with a fourth planned. CADD is now live on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, and will soon be live on Solana.

Lavallée has been explicit that chain selection is driven by where institutional volume already sits. Lavallée says market dynamics always dictate which blockchain the company should adopt. Currently he says the company uses Base for transactions because of its ability to handle large volumes. He says Ethereum, the open source blockchain network, is "the book of record" at the institutional level and an obvious choice for big institutions. The company is also working with payments-first blockchain Tempo to integrate CADD into workflows, and Lavallée says Solana will be the next natural expansion as its known for its extreme speed and is frequently used by global payment processors.

Tempo, the third launch chain, is a relevant data point for understanding why the rest of CADD's selection looks the way it does. Tempo is a payments-first blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, designed to address the growing need for optimized stablecoin infrastructure as digital dollars go mainstream. Its design partner list — which includes Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, Visa, and more — overlaps directly with CADD's backers. Shopify sits on both lists. Tempo is also a CADD design partner.

What the Absence of XRPL Signals

The XRP Ledger has supported issued tokens since launch and has been used to issue stablecoins for years. XRPL can be used for developing payments, tokenization, DeFi, CBDCs and stablecoins. XRP is the native token for XRPL. Ripple's own stablecoin operates on XRPL alongside Ethereum. Natively issued on XRP Ledger and Ethereum blockchains, Ripple USD is fully backed by a segregated reserve of cash and cash equivalents and redeemable 1:1 for US dollars.

CADD's selection of Ethereum, Base, Tempo, and eventually Solana is a statement about where Tetra and its consortium see institutional Canadian stablecoin demand forming. Lavallée's stated criteria — institutional book of record, transaction volume capacity, payment processor familiarity, and existing partner alignment — drove the chains chosen. XRPL was not selected against those criteria for this launch.

That does not foreclose XRPL inclusion later. Lavallée framed chain selection as driven by ongoing market dynamics rather than as fixed, and CADD's contract structure means additional chains can be added if institutional demand emerges. But for the launch corridor — Canadian institutional payments, treasury, and cross-border settlement — Tetra and the consortium backing it did not see XRPL as the rail their initial users would want.

For the Canadian XRPL ecosystem, the practical question is what use cases would change that assessment. Direct settlement on XRPL between Canadian fintechs and Asia-Pacific corridors where XRPL has stronger institutional density is one. Integration with RLUSD as a USD-side leg in CAD-USD onchain conversions is another. Neither was part of the CADD launch design.

The Broader Canadian Stablecoin Field

CADD is not the only Canadian-dollar stablecoin effort in motion. There is also Loon, a Calgary firm spun out of Paytrie in October, that is taking over CADC, a stablecoin launched in 2021 that has processed more than $200 million in volume. Loon raised $3 million pre-seed and pre-filed a prospectus with the Alberta Securities Commission. Stablecorp's QCAD and VersaBank's Real Bank Deposit Tokens are also pursuing related but structurally different approaches.

CADD's distinction is the issuance vehicle. While other Canadian stablecoins exist, CADD is the first one issued by a licensed trust company under a traditional financial services framework approved by the Alberta Treasury Board and Finance. It is also backed by established Canadian players like National Bank of Canada, Shopify, Wealthsimple, and ATB Financial.

Whether that distinction translates into institutional volume is the question the next twelve months will answer. Stablecoin usage has been ramping up in recent years globally, with market capitalization growing roughly ten times since 2020 and surpassing $400-billion this year, according to Deloitte. But consumer adoption is still lagging. According to a Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank study published in April, less than one per cent of stablecoins are used for payments, and about a fifth aren't being used at all.

What to Watch

Three signals over the next few months will determine whether CADD becomes a serious piece of Canadian payments infrastructure or a regulated curiosity:

• Reserve attestations. Monthly third-party reports beginning shortly after launch will establish whether the disclosure cadence Tetra has promised meets the standard institutional treasurers expect before holding meaningful balances.
• Settlement volume between consortium members. The December testnet transfer between National Bank and Wealthsimple was a proof of concept. Sustained production flow between consortium institutions is the test of whether the infrastructure is being used or only available.
• Federal regulatory posture. Tetra is operating under provincial trust law and a stated belief in federal distribution rights pending the Stablecoin Act taking effect in 2027. How federal regulators respond to a CAD stablecoin operating at national scale under provincial authority will shape what the next Canadian issuer can do.

For XRPL Canada readers, the central takeaway is straightforward: the most institutionally backed CAD stablecoin to date launched without XRPL, and the criteria that drove that decision were articulated openly by Tetra's CEO. The path back onto the chain list runs through use cases where XRPL's payment characteristics, institutional integrations, or corridor density offer something the launch chains do not.