Jack Henry widens Google Cloud tie for tokenized deposits

Jack Henry said it is widening its collaboration with Google Cloud in a push to let banks and credit unions offer tokenized deposits. The Nasdaq-listed core banking vendor said the work centers on Google Cloud Universal Ledger, the platform the two companies have been developing together.

Tokenized deposits are digital claims on money held at a regulated bank, recorded on a distributed ledger rather than a conventional account database. Proponents argue the format can speed settlement and open new payment use cases while keeping balances inside the banking system and under existing deposit insurance and supervision.

For Jack Henry, the tie-up is a way to bring the technology to community and regional institutions that lack the engineering resources to build ledger infrastructure themselves. Google Cloud gains distribution across a large base of US banks and credit unions that rely on Jack Henry for core processing.

The companies framed the expansion as groundwork for future offerings rather than a live product, with the practical shape of the service likely to be defined as the partnership develops and institutions weigh which payment flows to move onto shared ledger rails first.