Wells Fargo said on its third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that it is helping set up a company to issue stablecoins. "We, along with 20 other international financial institutions, are establishing a new company to issue stablecoins beginning in the first half of 2027," Chief Executive Charlie Scharf said in prepared remarks on the call. He said the product "will support wholesale, institutional, and retail use cases." He did not name the other institutions.
Scharf was cautious about demand at home. "Use cases in the U.S. for stablecoins remain unclear, but we're building solutions to be prepared as opportunities potentially unfold," he said.
Wells Fargo already runs a deposit token. "Last month, we launched tokenized deposits on our proprietary blockchain platform, providing corporate and commercial clients with a new way to move money more efficiently," Scharf said.
Chief Financial Officer Mike Santomassimo gave the first numbers on it. Asked by Bank of America analyst Ebrahim Poonawala to size the business, he said cross-border payments on the system are "getting from initiation to beneficiary account in two minutes or less," adding that it "is in production by the way, and it's small volume so far," he said.
Scharf rejected the idea that AI agents will drain bank deposits. Asked by TD Cowen analyst Scott Siefers whether agents could move idle cash to higher-yielding accounts, he said "the idea that that's going to contribute to mass movement to higher-rate alternatives, I think is completely overdone, especially for the time period we can see."
Citigroup put tokenized deposits ahead of stablecoins. Chair and Chief Executive Jane Fraser cited "the launch of Citi Token Services in the UAE and Japan" in her prepared remarks. Answering China Securities analyst Kunpeng Ma, Fraser said the token service is "now operating in seven markets around the world." She said stablecoins can be more cumbersome than tokenization, with added complexity in compliance, accounting and tax when moving money across borders. In the same answer she said Citi's digital asset custody platform goes live later this year and will offer clients one-stop custody, including for digital assets.
Citi also talked about agents inside the bank. Asked by Wells Fargo Securities analyst Mike Mayo whether Citi is an "AI victim or beneficiary," Fraser said "14,000 of our engineers use our main agentic coding tool, Devin," and "I am not worried about deposit flight risk in Services."
JPMorgan Chase took the agent question from the risk side. "We're not going to allow just any outside agents to come in inside the company, because it's just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan," Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said on the call. Poonawala had asked about "the disruption risk" of agentic AI and "the emergence of all the rogue agents." Dimon said users "should understand there's a liability transfer."
JPMorgan's Smart Cash product is in a pilot. Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said it is "live now" and called it "very, very early days" and "a targeted pilot-type thing." Asked by Evercore ISI analyst Glenn Schorr about agent-driven deposit runs, he said: "I'm just a little bit less persuaded that you really have cliff effects there." JPMorgan executives did not mention stablecoins, its JPMD deposit token or its Kinexys network on the call.
Goldman Sachs called tokenization important but small. Asked by Schorr about "tokenization, agentic trading, DeFi vaults, prediction markets," Chief Executive David Solomon said "tokenization is obviously an important trend" but "those activities are very small at this point," on the call.
The written results said far less than the calls. Le Coin found no mention of stablecoins, deposit tokens or tokenization in any of the four banks' releases or presentations, including Goldman's presentation, which mentions AI only in its forward-looking-statements caution. Wells Fargo's release names "artificial intelligence and digital assets" only in that same kind of caution, not as a risk factor.
Table 1. What the banks said on their calls, by bank and topic (Sources 1 to 12; Le Coin review, source 13. Call quotes checked against transcripts of the calls on Oct. 21, 2026.)
| Bank | Stablecoins | Tokenized deposits, tokenization | AI agents | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wells Fargo | Scharf: new company "to issue stablecoins beginning in the first half of 2027"; U.S. use cases "remain unclear" | Scharf: launched "last month"; Santomassimo: "two minutes or less" | Scharf: mass deposit movement "completely overdone" | Q3 call (3) |
| Citigroup | Fraser: stablecoins "can be a bit more clunky" | Fraser: Citi Token Services in UAE and Japan; "seven markets" | Fraser: "agentic coding tool, Devin" | Q3 call (4) |
| JPMorgan | Nothing said | Nothing said | Dimon: not "just any outside agents"; Barnum: Smart Cash "live now" | Q3 call (1) |
| Goldman Sachs | Nothing said | Solomon: "important trend," "very small" | Analyst named "agentic trading"; no direct answer | Q3 call (2) |
Fig. 1. What four big banks said about stablecoins, tokenized deposits, digital assets and AI agents on their third-quarter calls and in their written results. (Source: Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs third-quarter 2026 earnings calls, Oct. 13, 2026; company releases and presentations, Oct. 13, 2026; Le Coin review, source 13.)
The tell is the split. The two banks that raised digital money in their own prepared remarks, Wells Fargo and Citi, led with tokenized deposits on their own blockchains, and only Wells Fargo committed to a stablecoin, with a launch date more than a year out.
Correction (Oct. 21, 2026, ET): An earlier version said two remarks had no named speaker; transcripts of the calls attribute them to JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon and Citigroup's Jane Fraser. All quotes from the JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs third-quarter earnings calls were checked word for word against transcripts of the calls. Wording in four JPMorgan quotes and one Citi quote was corrected to match, and two Citi remarks that did not match the transcript are now paraphrased. The Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs quotes were confirmed unchanged. A call timestamp for a Wells Fargo remark was removed, sources 1 to 4 now cite the calls themselves, and a sentence about which banks had posted transcripts has been removed.
Sources
- JPMorgan Chase Q3 2026 earnings call, Oct. 13, 2026
- Goldman Sachs Q3 2026 earnings call, Oct. 13, 2026
- Wells Fargo Q3 2026 earnings call, Oct. 13, 2026
- Citigroup Q3 2026 earnings call, Oct. 13, 2026
- JPMorgan Chase, 3Q26 Earnings Press Release (PDF): https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chase-and-co/investor-relations/documents/quarterly-earnings/2026/3rd-quarter/6c1f8114-1be4-4174-8292-f75bbb59bc21.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- JPMorgan Chase, 3Q26 Earnings Presentation (PDF): https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chase-and-co/investor-relations/documents/quarterly-earnings/2026/3rd-quarter/2b5b9a7e-a968-4985-94ad-5fa949a08d1c.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Wells Fargo, Third Quarter 2026 earnings release (PDF): https://www.wellsfargo.com/assets/pdf/about/investor-relations/earnings/third-quarter-2026-earnings.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Wells Fargo, 3Q26 Financial Results presentation (PDF): https://www.wellsfargo.com/assets/pdf/about/investor-relations/earnings/third-quarter-2026-financial-results.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Citigroup, Third Quarter 2026 Results and Key Metrics (PDF): https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/Earnings/Q32026/2026prqtr3rslt.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Citigroup, Earnings Results Presentation, Third Quarter 2026 (PDF): https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/storage/public/Earnings/Q32026/2026psqtr3rslt.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Goldman Sachs, Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Results (PDF): https://www.goldmansachs.com/pressroom/press-releases/current/pdfs/2026-q3-results.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 10:24 a.m. ET)
- Goldman Sachs, 3Q26 Earnings Results Presentation (PDF): https://www.goldmansachs.com/pressroom/press-releases/current/pdfs/2026-q3-earnings-results-presentation.pdf (accessed Oct. 13, 2026, 3:59 p.m. ET)
- Table 1 and Fig. 1 data: Le Coin review of sources 1 to 12. Data file drafts/wip/markets-2026-10-13-bank-earnings-digital-assets.fig-1-data.v4.csv
Holding the Corner.
Not financial advice.