Tetra Trust has launched CADD, a Canadian dollar stablecoin issued by a federally regulated trust company, with Shopify and National Bank of Canada among its backers. The launch was confirmed in a post from CoinMarketCap on May 5, 2026, and marks the first time a CAD-pegged token has been issued by a domestic, prudentially supervised institution rather than an offshore or unregulated entity.
For a market that has spent years watching USDC and USDT swallow most of its on-chain stablecoin volume, the arrival of a regulated Loonie token changes the local plumbing question: Canadian users and merchants no longer need to route through US dollar rails to settle on-chain.
CADD sits inside an Alberta trust charter with reserves at National Bank
CADD is a 1:1 CAD-pegged stablecoin issued by Tetra Trust, a Calgary-based qualified custodian and trust company chartered under Alberta's Loan and Trust Corporations Act. That charter matters. It puts the issuer inside the same regulatory perimeter as banks for purposes of fiduciary custody, segregation of customer assets, and capital requirements.
Reserves sit with National Bank of Canada, one of the country's Big Six banks. Shopify is named as a backer alongside National Bank, which gives the project both a payments-rail anchor and a domestic banking anchor on day one. The combination is unusual: most stablecoin launches start with a tech sponsor and chase banking partners later. Here both arrived together.
The token is designed to clear on public blockchains while reserves remain on a Canadian bank balance sheet. Tetra has not published a full technical specification of supported chains in the announcement, so users should expect that detail to firm up over the coming weeks.
A native CAD rail removes the USD round trip for Shopify merchants
USD stablecoins dominate the global on-chain settlement market. According to industry trackers, more than 99% of stablecoin supply is denominated in US dollars. That has practical consequences for Canadian users: every on-chain CAD transaction historically routed through a USD intermediary, picking up FX spread on the way in and on the way out.
A native CAD stablecoin removes that round trip. For Canadian merchants accepting on-chain payments, for Canadian-domiciled fintechs, and for crypto exchanges with Canadian customer bases, settling in CADD instead of USDC eliminates a layer of conversion cost. It also removes the tax and accounting friction of treating every payment as a USD transaction with an FX leg.
The Shopify involvement is the part worth watching. Shopify already supports stablecoin checkout in select markets through partners. A direct relationship with a regulated CAD issuer gives Shopify's Canadian merchants a path to accept on-chain CAD payments without exposing themselves to USD price risk between sale and settlement.
A trust charter beats e-money and deposit models on bankruptcy remoteness
CADD enters a small but growing club of bank- or trust-issued stablecoins. Japan's licensed yen-denominated tokens have been live since 2024. Europe has several MiCA-compliant euro stablecoins from regulated e-money institutions. The US has bank-issued tokenized deposits but no federally regulated retail stablecoin yet, with the Senate CLARITY Act compromise still working through reconciliation.
What separates CADD from those peers is the issuer structure. Tetra Trust is a trust company, not an e-money institution or a deposit-taking bank. Holders have a direct trust claim on the underlying CAD reserves rather than a deposit liability or an e-money obligation. In the event of issuer insolvency, segregated trust assets would not be part of the general estate.
That structural difference is similar to how some US institutional stablecoins are organized through Bermuda or New York trust charters. It generally produces stronger bankruptcy-remoteness than a deposit-backed model, though it requires the trust to maintain conservative reserve composition and disclosure.
Open Questions
The announcement leaves several practical questions unanswered. There is no public attestation schedule yet for reserve composition. The list of supported blockchains has not been formalized. Distribution partners beyond Shopify, including which Canadian crypto exchanges will list CADD, have not been disclosed. Redemption mechanics for retail users versus institutional users are not yet detailed.
Tetra has built a reputation among Canadian institutions as a custodian for crypto assets and tokenized securities. Issuing a stablecoin is a different business with different risks: peg defense, redemption queues, and reserve management under stress. Those will be tested over time, not at launch.
Overview
Canada now has a CAD stablecoin issued by a federally regulated trust company with reserves at a Big Six bank and Shopify as a launch partner. The combination of regulatory standing, banking infrastructure, and a built-in distribution channel through Shopify gives CADD a stronger starting position than most retail stablecoin launches. Adoption will depend on which exchanges list it, how Shopify integrates it for Canadian merchants, and how transparent reserve attestations turn out to be in the first quarters of operation.
