More than 90 North Dakota banks adopt Roughrider Coin

More than 90 banks and credit unions in North Dakota have shared a single digital dollar since October 1. The Roughrider Coin is a dollar-backed stablecoin that circulates on the Solana blockchain. It is thus used for their transfers between establishments. The Bank of North Dakota, the only state public bank in the country, is leading this project, announced in the fall of 2025.

The device is based on Fiserv. This American banking software giant equips thousands of establishments and has just put its Digital Asset Platform into service, of which the Roughrider Coin is the first use case. The issue therefore goes well beyond North Dakota. Fiserv can now offer the same mechanism to all the banks it already equips.

Four actors share the work. The Bank of North Dakota is primarily the initiator and sponsor. VersaBank USA issues the Roughrider Coin. This American subsidiary of Canadian VersaBank manages the creation and destruction of tokens, their conservation and the reserves that back them. Fireblocks then provides the security infrastructure and tokenization. Finally, Solana serves as a ledger, that is, a public ledger that records each transfer.

Fiserv connects everything to the banks. They access the token through Commercial Center, the online banking tool for businesses which is already used for their traditional interbank transfers. According to Fiserv's October 1 press release, the platform supports the issuance, reserves, custody and settlement of tokens.

No need to search for Roughrider Coin on an exchange. The token remains reserved for participating establishments and the general public does not have access to it. In other words, it only circulates from bank to bank.

The interest lies in the deadline. However, a traditional interbank transfer can take several hours, sometimes until the next business day. The issuer VersaBank promises near real-time settlement in its own press release. And no one likes to wait on Monday for a transfer launched on Friday.

There remains a significant gray area. The Fiserv press release does not give any quantified payment deadline or volumes. No one has published the amount of reserves either. As for “near real time”, it comes from VersaBank, issuer of the token and therefore stakeholder.

More than 90 establishments have access to the stablecoin, but no one has provided usage figures.