Bank of North Dakota launched Roughrider Coin, a U.S. dollar-backed token for interbank payments, at its banking forum in the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora. Don Morgan, the bank’s president and CEO, shared the stage with advisory board chair Karl Bollingberg and nearly two dozen people who had worked on the coin, Jacob Orledge of the North Dakota Monitor reported.

BND is the nation’s only state-owned bank, chartered in 1919. Roughrider Coin is a tokenized digital asset built for regulated institutions and tied into existing payment operations. It enables secure, near real-time settlement of routine bank-to-bank transfers.

A stablecoin is a digital token built to hold a steady value against a government currency. BND describes Roughrider Coin as a permissioned, fully reserved token deposit backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars, according to The Dakotan. BND said North Dakota is among the first U.S. states to operationalize a dollar-backed stablecoin for financial institutions, within a defined governance and compliance framework.

Gate City, First International, Capital and North Star

The four pilot institutions named in BND’s release are Gate City Bank, First International Bank & Trust, Capital Credit Union and North Star Community Credit Union.

Morgan said: “Roughrider Coin reflects the strength of North Dakota’s financial community working together. Four of our state’s financial institutions partnered with BND to validate the use case, and our collaboration with Fiserv, VersaBank USA and Solana provided the proven technology to bring this infrastructure online.”

Peter Stenehjem, CEO of First International Bank & Trust, pointed to the bank’s 2018 acquisition of Kotapay. He said: “Our participation in Roughrider Coin allows us to stay at the forefront of innovation, thoughtfully evaluate and manage emerging risks, and gain valuable experience alongside our longtime partners at BND and financial institutions across North Dakota. Roughrider Coin represents an additional payment rail that can support future use cases where blockchain technology delivers meaningful value.”

Ryan Goellner, executive vice president and chief information officer of Gate City Bank, said: “We were attracted to the fact that this is a bank-governed program operating within a controlled network of approved financial institutions rather than an open cryptocurrency environment.”

Fiserv, VersaBank USA and Solana

BND said Fiserv provided the digital asset platform and banking integration, VersaBank USA supported regulated custody and issuance for fiat-backed digital assets, and Solana supplied the blockchain that underpins permissioned operations.

Fiserv called Roughrider Coin the first live use case on its digital asset platform. VersaBank serves as issuer, Fireblocks is providing secure digital asset infrastructure and tokenization services, and transactions are processed on the Solana blockchain. Banks and credit unions will access Roughrider Coin through Commercial Center, Fiserv’s commercial online banking system.

Fiserv said the dollar-backed stablecoin gives “more than 90 participating banks and credit unions in North Dakota” a more efficient way to conduct bank-to-bank transactions. BND told The Dakotan: “Although Fiserv references more than 90 participating financial institutions, Roughrider Coin access is being introduced gradually.”

BND’s release said use of Roughrider Coin is voluntary and available to all of the state’s financial institutions, and that expanding access will occur in phases. BND told The Dakotan the coin had been migrated from a test environment into production and that controlled trials were continuing with the four pilot institutions.

A penny between two partners

Morgan told the North Dakota Monitor the bank had completed its first live transactions outside a test environment by using the stablecoin to move a penny almost instantly between two partners.

The coin is not available to the general public or to merchants. The pilot is designed to test bank-to-bank transactions behind the scenes, the Monitor reported. Morgan said BND limited the scope to keep early risk down, and that internal and external risk assessments concluded the initial program would be considered low risk.

BND told The Dakotan the system is designed for near-instant settlement around the clock, that transactions are expected to cost about one cent, and that initial potential uses include treasury operations and loan payoffs.

Bob Herrington, president and CEO of North Star Community Credit Union, a credit union that started in Benson County and now has 13 locations, told the Monitor: “If we miss the cutoff by even a few minutes, it’s going to have to go out the next morning. Whereas if I used Roughrider Coin to do that same transaction, they’re gonna get it while I’m on the phone with them, telling them it’s coming.”

North Dakota banking customers should not see any immediate changes even if their institution is in the pilot, the Monitor reported. Morgan said one of the first benefits customers could see is pushing daily transaction deadlines later in the day.

No rush to market

Morgan said there is no set deadline for the pilot. “We’re not getting in any hurry. We have no rush to market. We’re not trying to meet shareholder return expectations. We’re trying to build this very safely, thoughtfully,” he said. “If this pilot went on for a whole ’nother year of simply just testing and working out kinks and bugs, I would be OK with that.”

BND will give regular updates to the North Dakota Industrial Commission, the three-person board that oversees the bank and is chaired by Gov. Kelly Armstrong, the Monitor reported. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring has urged the bank to proceed with caution.

BND and Fiserv first announced plans for Roughrider Coin in October 2025, according to The Dakotan. More information is at bnd.nd.gov/roughrider.