Tetra Trust Company, a Canadian financial services and digital technology provider, launched CADD, a Canadian dollar stablecoin approved by the Alberta Treasury and Finance Board.
The company said it is the first CAD-pegged stablecoin issued by a regulated financial institution in Canada. According to the firm, the reserves are held in trust under Canadian law and are dedicated to redemption. The token is active on major blockchains including Base, Ethereum and Tempo, with Solana support planned.
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 owns a majority stake. The same consortium is also supporting the launch.
In December, Tetra conducted test transactions between Wealthsimple and National Bank. The transfer was the first time a Canadian stablecoin moved between two financial institutions, the firm said.
Tetra positioned CADD for institutional use cases, including 24/7 cross-border settlement, real-time corporate treasury transfers, programmable market payments, and direct fintech-to-fintech settlement without the delays of correspondent banking.
A 320 billion dollar market
The launch is not a surprise, as the stablecoin sector has grown exponentially in recent years, but lacked a meaningful, regulated Canadian counterpart.
Canada releases approximately $424 billion per business day in legacy rails that still rely on batch infrastructure first implemented in the 1980s, the firm said. While the United States is pushing to grow the stablecoin sector through regulation, Canadian companies have lacked a domestic option to move CAD on blockchains, leaving dollar-denominated stablecoins to dominate.
Global stablecoin transaction volume will exceed $27 trillion in 2025, surpassing Visa’s annual payments volume. The current market capitalization of stablecoins is $320 billion, with the majority of that being dollar stablecoins, according to DeFiLlama.
Meanwhile, the competitive set in the country is small.
Coinbase Ventures-backed Stablecorp filed a preliminary prospectus for QCAD with the Ontario Securities Commission in June last year and received final approval in December. The token is not yet widely available.
There’s also Loon, a Calgary company spun off from Paytrie in October, which will take over CADC, a stablecoin launched in 2021 that has processed more than $200 million in volume. Loon raised $3 million pre-seed and previously filed a prospectus with the Alberta Securities Commission.
Tetra Trust was Canada’s first regulated digital asset custodian and provides custody for the country’s first staking-capable ether and solana ETFs.
