The Clearing House said on September 24 that it has selected Quant to build the network behind its On-Chain Money Initiative, the interbank plumbing for tokenized deposits. Quant will supply the interoperability, orchestration and transaction-management layer, plus the connections to existing fiat payment systems. The Clearing House expects to open the network to participating institutions in the first half of 2027.
Why the operator of RTP and CHIPS is doing this
The Clearing House already runs RTP for instant retail and business payments and CHIPS for large-value interbank settlement. Both settle in central bank money. Tokenized deposits are the same claim on a bank, issued on a ledger, and several large US banks have built their own. What none of them has is a way to pay each other.
That is the gap the initiative addresses. A bank keeps its own tokenized deposit product; the network carries the message, clears the transfer and settles it, so a token issued by one bank can be received by another.
Two capabilities are promised. The network is meant to settle payments immediately and to let a transfer trigger automatically once agreed conditions are met, which would remove a manual step banks and their customers handle today.
What the two sides said
The Clearing House's chief strategy officer, Sal Karakaplan, framed the choice as a matter of access: “Quant brings the technology and expertise needed to support the network, giving financial institutions of all sizes a path to participate.” Quant's founder and chief executive, Gilbert Verdian, went further: “Together with The Clearing House, we're changing how money works in America, and laying the foundation for programmable money that moves seamlessly across the financial system.”
The use cases named for the network
The release points at corporate treasury, liquidity management, cross-border payments and digital asset settlement. Each is a case where the money is ready before the process is: a correspondent chain that closes for the night, a subsidiary that needs funding in another time zone, a securities leg that settles on a different clock from the cash leg.
The case rests first on corporate treasury. Moving cash between accounts at two banks on a Friday evening currently means either an instant payment rail with its own limits or a wire that lands on Monday. A tokenized deposit that clears between banks at any hour removes the cutoff without moving the money outside the banking system.
For a mid-size bank, the practical question is not whether to build a token but whether joining costs less than staying out. Interoperability turns that into an arithmetic problem: the price of connecting against the volume of counterparties reachable on day one. That is why the membership list matters more than the technology.
What to watch before 2027
Three questions decide whether this becomes market infrastructure. Which institutions sign up beyond the large banks already backing the initiative, such as Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, since interoperability is worth what its membership is worth. How conditional payments are described in the rulebook, because that is where liability for a failed trigger will sit. And how the network connects to RTP and CHIPS in practice, which determines whether a treasurer sees one rail or three.
For now this is a supplier decision with a date attached. Nothing settles on the network yet.