Tetra Trust Company, a Canadian digital technology and financial services provider, launched CADD, a Canadian dollar-denominated stablecoin approved by the Alberta Treasury Board and Finance.
The company said it is the first CAD-pegged stablecoin issued by a regulated financial institution in Canada. Reserves are held in trust under Canadian law and are dedicated to redemption, according to the company. The token is live 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 ran testnet 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 marketplace payouts and direct fintech-to-fintech settlement without correspondent bank delays.
A market of 320 billion dollars
The launch is not a surprise as the stablecoin sector has grown exponentially in recent years but lacked a meaningful, regulated Canadian counterpart.
Canada clears about $424 billion per year. everyday on older rails that still rely on batch infrastructure first implemented in the 1980s, the company said. While the US is pushing to grow the stablecoin sector through regulation, Canadian companies have lacked a domestic option to move CAD onto blockchains, leaving USD-denominated stablecoins to dominate.
Global stablecoin transaction volume passed $27 trillion by 2025, surpassing Visa’s annual payment volume. The current stablecoin market capitalization is $320 billion, with the majority being USD stablecoins, according to DeFiLlama.
Meanwhile, competition in the country is small.
Stablecorp, backed by Coinbase Ventures, filed a preliminary prospectus for QCAD with the Ontario Securities Commission last June and received final approval in December. The token is not yet widely available.
There’s also Loon, a Calgary company founded by Paytrie in October, which is acquiring CADC, a stablecoin launching in 2021 that has processed more than $200 million in volume. Loon raised $3 million pre-seed and filed a prospectus with the Alberta Securities Commission.
Tetra Trust was Canada’s first regulated digital asset manager and provides custodian for the country’s first staking-enabled ether and solana ETFs.
