As we move into the final months of 2026, the vast majority of banks still don’t have a plan for digital assets. Bank Director’s soon-to-be released 2026 Technology Survey, sponsored by Jack Henry & Associates, found that fewer than 10% of banks have a formal strategy in place for stablecoins or tokenized deposits. But some banks and credit unions are planning for a future where digital assets and blockchain technology offer them a broad array of faster, more efficient services.
Thirty-nine state banking associations on August 25 announced the creation of the BankChain Alliance — “an industry-owned, industry-designed and industry-governed network built on a common blockchain platform,” according to the organization’s initial press release. Several bank-led tokenized deposit networks have already launched this year that would give participating institutions the ability to clear and settle transfers and payments between their customers. But the BankChain Alliance is seeking to separate itself by building out an entire digital asset ecosystem.
Kathy Kraninger, CEO of the Florida Bankers Association and interim chair of the BankChain Alliance, says customer expectations are changing quickly in this space. “They’re not asking for stablecoins. They’re not asking for tokenized deposits,” she says. “What they’re asking for though is more efficient, cheaper, faster transactions.”
The BankChain Alliance sees a future where banks will have access to services like escrow, trade and supply chain finance and treasury management that can all run in an automated, programmable fashion on its blockchain network.
Bankers Are Starting To Catch on
Wade Peery, the former FirstBank chief innovation officer turned digital assets consultant, says even though most financial institutions aren’t engaging with digital assets yet, they are getting more educated about the full range of possibilities they offer. “They’re able to look at how we do certain things today and think about how we can improve those,” he says.
As an example of that, Peery says many bankers are starting to understand how digital asset payments are both instantaneous and programmable. Through the use of automated smart contracts, each phase of a complex payment process can execute on the blockchain as soon as the previous one has been fulfilled. Peery says a banker who had just completed an estate sale approached him about that concept at a recent banking conference. “He said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this all night. So, I signed the house away, the closing agent has the money, then it has to go to the attorney who’s handling the estate, and then it goes to me. And this happens over a weekend. So, I’m four days out. I wonder what the amount of money is I lost in those four days?’” Peery says.
Not an Easy Lift
While Peery believes every financial institution needs to develop a strategy to react to digital assets, he says a shift to blockchain is a much more difficult proposition.
Joel McGill, a former Coinbase software engineer who now provides digital asset advisory services to community banks through his company, Sinfra Financial, says it can’t happen overnight. “They have a lot of constraints when it comes to properly integrating with these newer systems, and switching from their traditional back office to a more digitized back office is a bit of a technical lift that they’re not quite prepared for,” he says. “And so, a lot of those conversations have been about how to think about integrating with existing turnkey solutions.”
Stablecore, the operating name of Stable Financial, offers one such turnkey solution. The company provides an enterprise software platform that allows financial institutions to offer stablecoin and tokenized deposit accounts and payments and even crypto-backed lending to their customers. Stablecore in 2026 has signed partnership agreements with five state banking associations, and also announced an agreement with Jack Henry to integrate with several of its core products used by banks and credit unions.
Nick Elledge, cofounder and chief operating officer of Stablecore, says the development of more bank-led blockchain networks is only one piece of the puzzle. “That really leaves the individual banks to be the nodes within the network, meaning that one individual bank who’s a Stablecore customer is able to connect to multiple stablecoins on multiple networks and be able to settle between them,” he says. “That’s how we see the future evolving.”
While Elledge believes it will be too costly and time-consuming for most small financial institutions to develop and build out similar technology solutions on their own, at least one is taking on that challenge.
St. Cloud Financial Credit Union (SCFCU), a $456 million institution based in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 2024 purchased a majority stake in DaLand CUSO, a credit union service organization that considers itself to be on the bleeding edge of digital assets. SCFCU in March launched its CU-Digital Asset Vault, which DaLand built through its Coin2Core digital asset infrastructure. It allows members to securely store their Bitcoin, Ethereum and Circle Internet Group’s stablecoin, USDC, in SCFCU’s digital vault, while still retaining ownership of those digital assets.
Chase Larson, executive vice president and chief lending officer at SFCFU, says his members like knowing their local institution is safeguarding those assets. “And then from an institutional standpoint, as we watch 3% to 4% of our deposit outflows going to Coinbase and other exchanges, this gives us the ability to bring that wealth back into our local community,” he says.
Jon Ungerland, a founding partner and chief innovation officer at DaLand CUSO, says the digital asset vault is only the first step in a multi-phase implementation of its Coin2Core infrastructure. By early 2027, SCFCU will also be able to integrate digital asset services into credit union payments, lending and other revenue generating operations, such as exchanges between fiat currency and digital asset accounts, directly within the core banking system.
“What we’ve really focused on building is something that anticipates a world beyond the electronic dollar, where financial institutions will need to stay plugged into the future of money,” Ungerland says.
It Isn’t All About Technology
While some institutions may be ahead of the game on both digital assets and blockchain technology, Peery says that is only half of the equation. He believes most financial institutions are not prepared for how the new technology might fit with many of their existing policies and procedures. That includes any existing Bank Secrecy Act or anti-money laundering programs, third-party risk management, legal and compliance policies and more. “I call it readiness,” Peery says. “The readiness lift is big beyond tech.”
But money center banks and neobanks are already accelerating these capabilities, and crypto firms with national trust bank charters are likely to soon join them. That means community banks and credit unions may have no choice but to get up to speed. SFCFU’s Larson thinks it may already be too late for some. “My belief is that those leaders starting today are very much behind,” he says. “I think we’re going to see things move quickly over the next few years.”
In the case of the BankChain Alliance, the group has yet to select a technology partner. But Kraninger remains confident they have time. She also believes thousands of banks will gravitate to the Alliance’s inclusive development plan. “It really is our intent to try to build this for banks of all sizes to participate,” she says. “This is literally what we do every day in terms of managing members and [encouraging] their ability to engage and feel that they have a voice.”
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