Tetra Digital Group Launches CADD, Canada’s First CAD-Backed Stablecoin Issued by a Financial Institution

Tetra Trust Company, via its agent CAD Digital Inc., today announced that CADD, a payment stablecoin backed 1:1 by Canadian dollars, has received regulatory approval from Alberta Treasury Board and Finance. This marks a national first for digital asset infrastructure in Canada by enabling Canadian dollars to move on blockchain rails under a financial services regulatory framework.

CADD is now live on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, and will soon be live on Solana.

Canada clears roughly $424 billion per business day, with retail payments still largely reliant on batch-based infrastructure first implemented in the 1980s. Even though the Canadian dollar is one of the most traded currencies globally, there has not been a widely adopted, production-scaled, CAD-denominated digital asset payment rail. CADD brings Canadian dollars onto continuous, programmable networks with near-instant settlement finality.

“This milestone reflects the strong collaboration with Alberta’s government, industry partners and regulators to bring a compliant and scalable Canadian-dollar stablecoin to market,” said Didier Lavallée, Founder and CEO of Tetra Digital Group. “CADD is issued by a regulated financial institution, with reserves held in Canada and compliance built in from day one by a firm with Canada’s longest track record of operating regulated digital asset infrastructure. It enables faster and more efficient movement of Canadian dollars on-chain within a structure institutions recognize.”

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.

Stablecoins are becoming more widely accepted for payments and settlement globally, but adoption has largely been dominated by U.S. dollar-denominated assets, leaving Canadian businesses and institutions without a competitive domestic option to move Canadian dollars on blockchain-based rails.

CADD is designed to address that need. 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. The model is built for banks, payment service providers, and fintech platforms that require regulatory clarity from the outset.

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Tetra Digital is uniquely positioned to launch CADD because of a long history of innovation in Canadian digital asset infrastructure. Tetra Trust was Canada’s first regulated digital asset custodian, establishing institutional-grade custody as a licensed provincial trust company. Tetra Trust supported the first staking-enabled Ethereum and Solana ETFs in Canada, bridging digital assets with traditional investment vehicles. Now with CADD, Tetra Digital launches Canada’s first CAD-backed stablecoin issued by a regulated financial institution that Canadian institutions already know and trust.

Globally, stablecoin infrastructure is shifting quickly. Visa began settling transactions in USDC in late 2025, Mastercard expanded stablecoin settlement across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and global stablecoin transaction volume surpassed $27 trillion in 2025, exceeding Visa’s annual payment volume. CADD brings this infrastructure to Canada, denominated in Canadian dollars and governed under Canadian law.

CADD enables institutional use cases that were previously difficult and impractical to execute on existing Canadian rails, 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.

Entering the market with institutional scale from day one, CADD is backed by a consortium of leading Canadian financial institutions and technology companies, including Tetra Digital Group, Urbana Corporation, Wealthsimple, Purpose Unlimited, Shakepay, ATB Financial, National Bank of Canada and Shopify.

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.

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