Shopify and National Bank of Canada Back Tetra Trust's CADD Stablecoin for 24/7 Institutional Settlement
Tetra Trust launched CADD — Canada's first CAD-backed stablecoin issued by a financial institution — on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, backed by Shopify, National Bank of Canada, Wealthsimple, ATB Financial, and Shakepay. The token targets 24/7 institutional settlement replacing legacy batch clearing.
Tetra Digital Group announced the launch of CADD — Canada's first Canadian dollar-backed stablecoin issued by a regulated financial institution — on May 4. The token is issued by Tetra Trust Company, which received regulatory approval from Alberta Treasury Board and Finance, and is backed by a consortium that includes Shopify, National Bank of Canada, Wealthsimple, ATB Financial, and Shakepay. CADD is now live on Base, Ethereum, and Tempo, with a Solana launch pending.
The Launch
CADD is backed 1:1 by Canadian dollars held in regulated custodial accounts. The token is designed as a payment and settlement instrument rather than a retail spending product — the primary use case is institutional settlement between financial institutions, replacing the batch processing systems that currently operate on business-hour schedules. Legacy bank settlement in Canada runs on T+1 clearing, closes on weekends and holidays, and charges basis-point fees for correspondent banking — all of which CADD eliminates by enabling atomic, 24/7 stablecoin settlement between participating institutions.
The consortium backing CADD is notable for its Canadian financial establishment depth. National Bank of Canada (C$45 billion in assets) and ATB Financial are regulated deposit-taking institutions; Wealthsimple is Canada's largest retail investment platform with 3.5 million users; Shopify provides e-commerce distribution across 100+ countries and a potential direct-to-merchant settlement use case. Together, the consortium creates both the supply side (institutional holders) and demand side (merchant payment flows) for CADD liquidity.
Who's Backing It
Tetra Digital Group raised approximately $10 million from its consortium partners to fund the CADD infrastructure launch. Shopify's participation is strategically significant: Canada's most valuable tech company processing hundreds of billions in gross merchandise volume annually has a natural interest in cheaper, faster cross-border settlement — CADD provides a CAD-denominated settlement layer that reduces foreign exchange friction for Canadian merchants selling internationally.
The CADD launch coincides with USDC's expansion into Canada and Western Union's USDPT launch globally — signaling a broader institutional stablecoin wave in which legacy financial infrastructure operators are moving simultaneously to ensure they control the stablecoin rails rather than ceding them to crypto-native issuers. In Canada specifically, CADD represents the establishment's answer to the question of whether a domestic stablecoin should be issued by a Silicon Valley fintech or a regulated Canadian institution.
BusinessWireOur Take
CADD is a structurally sound stablecoin with the right backing — regulated issuer, major financial institution partners, clear settlement use case. The risk is distribution: Canada's crypto adoption lags behind the US, and 24/7 institutional settlement, while valuable, addresses a pain point that is more acutely felt by large financial institutions than by the retail base. The CADD thesis gets validated if Shopify integrates it into its payments stack — at that point, CADD has direct access to the Canadian merchant economy and becomes a mainstream payment rail. Without that integration, CADD risks being a technically sound product used primarily for interbank settlement experiments. Watch Shopify's Q3 earnings call for any product announcements related to stablecoin payments.
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