On 12 December 2024, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its Report to raise awareness of tokenised deposits, assess their potential benefits and challenges, and promote convergence in their classification. The Report explains that to date, the EBA has identified very few cases of tokenised deposits. Meanwhile, interest from credit institutions appears to be growing. Potential benefits include programmability and automation of transfers, while potential challenges include issues relating to consumer protection, operational risk, and the application of the anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism framework.
In light of such developments, the EBA will continue to monitor market developments and promote discussion on potential benefits and challenges, as well as on issues relating to regulatory classification as compared to EMTs, which are in scope of MiCAR (Regulation 2023/1114/EU).
