JPMorgan has made its deposit token JPM Coin available on Ethereum for institutional clients. The token had already launched on Base in November 2025. As a result, the bank now offers large-value dollar payments on two public blockchains.
A deposit token is a digital payment instrument on a blockchain that represents a bank deposit. Unlike a stablecoin such as USDC, the money stays within the bank's regulated infrastructure. JPM Coin belongs to Kinexys, JPMorgan's blockchain unit formerly known as Onyx. In 2019, the name originally referred to an internal payment system at the bank. The current token, ticker JPMD, is the first version on a public chain. It started with a pilot on Base, the layer-2 network of Coinbase, in June 2025. Besides Coinbase, early testers included liquidity provider B2C2 and Mastercard. According to the bank, more than USD 4 trillion has moved through Kinexys since its launch. On average, that comes to USD 7 billion per day.
What institutional clients can do with JPM Coin on Ethereum
The product itself remains unchanged. Previously, JPMD ran only on Base. On October 19, 2026, Ethereum went live as a second chain. According to the Kinexys announcement, JPM Coin on Ethereum is open only to institutional clients of J.P. Morgan. The token targets large-value payments between professional market participants. Retail clients have no access.
Transfers run directly between these clients, within the EVM ecosystem. The term covers blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Base included. These networks run smart contracts built to the Ethereum standard. The bank describes Ethereum as a layer-1 network: the base layer on which networks such as Base run. In addition, the bank has announced a JPM Coin rollout on the Canton Network, a blockchain outside the EVM world.
In regulatory terms, JPMD remains a bank deposit, even when the token circulates on a public blockchain. Holders therefore have a claim against JPMorgan, just as with an ordinary bank balance. A stablecoin issuer, by contrast, issues its own means of payment and backs it with reserves. Overall, the second chain mainly widens the reach of treasury departments' dollar deposits. They can put the money to work on the chain where their counterparties or tokenized assets already sit. There is no need to swap it into a stablecoin first.
Why Kinexys is betting on Ethereum's liquidity
Kinexys cites the established depth of on-chain liquidity and tokenized assets on Ethereum as the reason for its choice. A common measure of liquidity is total value locked (TVL), the capital committed to DeFi applications. According to DeFiLlama, this figure stood at just under USD 50 billion on Ethereum in the week of the announcement. Base, by comparison, came in at just over USD 6 billion, or about one-eighth of that. However, the Ethereum figure has dropped by just over a quarter since late December 2025. At the time, it stood at around USD 68 billion.
Ethereum is not new territory for JPMorgan. In December 2025, the bank launched its first tokenized money market fund there, with USD 100 million in seed capital. Five months later, in May 2026, a second tokenized fund followed. With JPM Coin, the bank's payment instrument now sits on Ethereum as well.
"Issuing JPM Coin first on Base and now on Ethereum is a meaningful step towards providing our institutional clients with multi-chain optionality for moving wholesale money across both the web3 and traditional finance ecosystems."
- Emma Landriault, Global Head of Kinexys Labs at Kinexys by J.P. Morgan
Ultimately, the client now chooses the chain on which its deposit works. The more capital and tokenized assets sit there, the more counterparties it finds for its payments. And the bank delivers the same money on both chains.
Deposit tokens stay outside the GENIUS Act
Media reports portrayed the move as preparation for the GENIUS Act. The federal law governs who may issue payment stablecoins in the United States. However, JPMorgan's announcement does not mention the law, and the statutory text does not support this reading either. Section 2(22) of the GENIUS Act excludes deposits under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act from the payment stablecoin definition. The exclusion explicitly covers deposits recorded using distributed ledger technology. Consequently, tokenized bank deposits such as JPMD fall under existing banking law.
The stablecoin regime is not in effect yet. Regulators have been working on the implementing rules since the signing in July 2025. Yet they missed the one-year deadline in July 2026. The regime takes effect no later than January 18, 2027, 18 months after signing. If the agencies issue final rules earlier, it applies 120 days afterward, provided that date falls before the cutoff.
For banks, this creates a timing gap. They can issue deposit tokens under existing supervisory law without waiting for the implementing rules. Would-be stablecoin issuers under the new federal regime, on the other hand, must wait for the finished rulebook. The announcement does not say whether JPMorgan is deliberately using this difference.
Big banks are building a shared network
JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo plan a joint network for tokenized deposits. The project runs through the banking association The Clearing House. The network should go live in the first half of 2027. More than a dozen other institutions are to take part as well, including BNY, BMO and HSBC. JPMorgan is thus pursuing two paths in parallel: its own token on public chains and a shared network with its competitors.
At the same time, individual banks are pushing ahead with their own platforms. Citi Token Services, Citi's service for tokenized deposits, is already live in seven markets. Besides the US and the UK, these include Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Wells Fargo also announced its own deposit tokens for fall 2026. At first, only selected corporate clients will get access, with limited conversions between US dollars and pounds sterling.
Kinexys itself runs mainly on a permissioned network, with public chains such as Base and Ethereum complementing it. Measured against the bank's core business, Kinexys volume remains comparatively small. JPMorgan's payments business processes more than USD 10 trillion every day. The Kinexys average of USD 7 billion per day equals less than 0.1% of that. For the bank, public blockchains therefore remain an additional channel alongside its existing payments business.
