NEW YORK & ZURICH – February 10, 2026 – For the first time in history, a global enterprise has paid its workforce using private stablecoins on an institutional-grade blockchain. The transaction, a real-world payroll run for a multinational company, took place on the Canton Network, the financial industry’s shared infrastructure layer backed by institutions like Goldman Sachs and DTCC.

It marks a turning point for digital assets, moving them from a speculative tool to a core component of everyday business operations.

The breakthrough was made possible by a collaboration between Toku, which handles the complex logic of global payroll, and Cantor8, which provides cutting-edge infrastructure and wallets for employees to receive their funds.

“Executing the first private payroll transaction on Canton isn’t just a technical milestone - it demonstrates how regulated institutions can finally run complex business processes on-chain with the privacy, compliance, and speed they demand," said Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder & CEO of Digital Asset.

"This is the kind of real, everyday financial activity that shows blockchain can be integrated into core operational workflows without exposing sensitive data or compromising regulatory constraints.”

For years, the idea of paying a global workforce with stablecoins was stuck.

While the benefits were self-evident (instant settlement and dramatically lower costs) the risks were a dealbreaker for any serious business. Public blockchains would expose sensitive salary data for the world to see.

Now, that problem has been solved.

A Trillion-Dollar Treasury Problem

For any treasurer or CFO managing a global workforce, the friction of the legacy correspondent banking system is a known and costly operational burden. The challenges are not just about fees; they represent significant drains on capital and personnel:

• Trapped Working Capital: Multi-day settlement periods for cross-border wires tie up significant capital that could otherwise be deployed.

• Operational Drag: High payment failure rates and the subsequent manual reconciliation processes consume valuable finance team resources.

• FX & Counterparty Risk: Payments are exposed to currency fluctuations during the lengthy settlement window, and the chain of intermediary banks introduces unnecessary counterparty risk.

These inefficiencies result in direct and indirect costs that can reach 5-8% of the total payment value.

How Private Stablecoin Payroll on Canton Works

The solution demonstrates how different specialists in the Canton ecosystem can come together to solve a complex problem that no single company could address alone:

• The Payroll Engine (Toku): Toku’s platform does the heavy lifting, managing the intricate rules of international payroll, tax withholding, and local labor laws. It connects to a company's existing HR software and translates complex payroll files into simple, on-chain payment instructions.

• The User Wallet (Cantor8): Critically, Cantor8’s C8 Wallet provides a simple, secure interface for employees, which is crucial for the success of the transaction. It provides the necessary infrastructure to make private and compliant transactions, as well as giving end users a secure place to receive their funds and manage their assets, with private keys stored on their own devices, completely shielded from outside access.

• The Rails (Canton Network): The entire transaction runs on the Canton Network, making all of the above even possible in the first place. The network provides the institutional-grade privacy and compliance guarantees. It ensures the payment is instant, the costs are minimal, and the data remains confidential.

“Our clients don’t care about blockchain, they care about getting their people paid on time without paying a fortune in fees,” said Ken O’Friel, CEO of Toku. “Canton gives us the privacy and trust we need to serve enterprise clients, and Cantor8 gives us the reliable and private wallet experience their employees expect. We just focus on what we do best: making global payroll painless.”

“For the network to succeed, the experience for the both the company and the end-user, whether that’s a trader or an employee receiving their salary, has to be seamless and secure,” said Philip Kaddaj, CEO of Cantor8. “We’ built the trusted Canton infrastructure rails that makes companies like Toku be able to leverage privacy with compliance. This collaboration is a perfect example of how institutional-grade security and consumer-grade simplicity can coexist on Canton.”

A New Tool for Institutional Treasury

The successful implementation of private stablecoin payroll represents a new, proven capability available to all members of the Canton Network ecosystem, as well as the broader market. The underlying infrastructure is in place, and the application layer is ready for deployment.

In short, this solution allows treasury and finance executives to:

• Reduce operational costs by 60-80% on cross-border payments.

• Free up working capital by reducing settlement times from days to minutes.

• Mitigate operational risk by eliminating manual reconciliation and payment failures.

• Enhance employee satisfaction by providing faster, more transparent access to funds.

About the Canton Network

Canton is the only public, permissionless blockchain purpose-built for institutional finance– uniquely combining privacy, compliance, and scalability. Governed by the Canton Foundation with participation from leading global financial institutions, Canton enables real-time, secure synchronization and settlement across multiple asset classes on a shared, interoperable infrastructure. The open-sourced network is powered by its native token, Canton Coin, and supports decentralized governance and collaborative application development. It’s the proven link between the promise of blockchain and the power of global finance, making finance flow the way it should. Learn more at: canton.network.

About Toku

Toku provides an enterprise-grade application layer for global payroll and payments on the Canton Network. Its platform plugs into existing corporate systems like ADP, Workday, Rippling and more to manage the complexity of international payroll, tax, and compliance. The platform processes billions in payroll volume yearly and is one of the fastest growing payroll service providers in the world.

About Cantor8

Cantor8 builds foundational infrastructure that makes the Canton Network usable including wallets, swaps, exchanges and an RWA issuance platform. It's C8 Enterprise Wallet is the leading self-custody wallet for institutions in the Canton ecosystem, trusted by hedge funds and large payroll providers, providing a reliable and secure way for companies to leverage the privacy and compliance benefits of the network.