The banking giant Wells Fargo & Company has filed a trademark application for WFUSD in the US, a move that is attracting significant attention from the financial community and cryptocurrency market. The application was submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on March 9th and appeared publicly on the morning of March 11th, sparking speculation that the bank, with assets exceeding $2.1 trillion, may be preparing to develop its own stablecoin or a blockchain-based payment infrastructure.
According to data from the USPTO, the WFUSD application has now met the minimum requirements for acceptance but is still awaiting formal review by lawyers. While trademark registration does not guarantee product deployment, the application's content reveals a fairly broad range of related services, including digital asset trading software, cryptocurrency-related financial services, and blockchain technology platforms for payments and asset Tokenize .
Specifically, Wells Fargo's application spans three international service groups. The first group relates to downloadable software for digital asset trading, electronic payments, and crypto wallets. The second group includes financial services such as cryptocurrency trading and exchange, and the provision of electronic financial information related to digital assets. The third group focuses on software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology, encompassing asset Tokenize systems, blockchain transaction infrastructure, digital payment processing, and data encryption and electronic storage solutions.
The name WFUSD quickly attracted attention due to its similarity to the symbols of many popular stablecoins today. In the crypto market, stablecoins are often named with the suffix "USD," representing their Peg to the US dollar, such as USD Coin (USDC) issued by Circle or Tether (USDT) from Tether Limited . Therefore, Wells Fargo's registration of the WFUSD trademark sparked speculation that the bank might be researching the issuance of a USD-pegged stablecoin for payments or digital asset transactions.
However, some industry experts argue that WFUSD may not necessarily be a stablecoin for the general public. Instead, it could be a tokenized deposit model – a bank deposit issued as a Token on the blockchain. Unlike conventional stablecoins widely traded in the crypto market, tokenized deposits are typically used only within the financial ecosystem of banks or in networks between financial institutions, enabling faster payments and reduced operating costs.
If this direction is followed, WFUSD could be similar to the strategy that JPMorgan Chase has pursued in recent years. The largest bank in the US previously developed a blockchain payment system for institutional clients and registered the trademark JPM Coin , enabling near-real-time money transfers between financial institutions. Additionally, JPMorgan has also filed a trademark application for “JPMD” for services related to crypto payments and digital assets.
