Hong Kong granted its first two stablecoin issuer licenses to HSBC and Anchorpoint Monetary, a Normal Chartered-led consortium that features Animoca Manufacturers on Friday.
The approvals by the Hong Kong Financial Authority (HKMA), the territory’s central financial institution, mark the primary batch below the Stablecoins Ordinance, which took impact in August 2025.
“We stay up for the issuers launching enterprise in keeping with their plans, exploring progress alternatives whereas correctly managing dangers,” HKMA chief government Eddie Yue stated in an announcement on Friday.
“We hope their promotion of regulated stablecoins will deal with ache factors in monetary and financial actions, create values for each people and companies, and help the wholesome improvement of digital property in Hong Kong.”
The HKMA assessed 36 purposes and had signaled that the preliminary spherical could be restricted. Monetary Secretary Paul Chan stated in his February funds deal with that solely “a small quantity” could be accepted, with the regulator prioritizing threat administration, reserve high quality, and anti-money-laundering controls.
The choice to license town’s note-issuing banks first seems to be deliberate. HSBC and Normal Chartered are two of solely three business banks approved to print Hong Kong greenback banknotes, a system that dates to 1846, when non-public banks started issuing foreign money backed by silver deposits within the absence of a colonial central financial institution.
Immediately, every note-issuing financial institution deposits U.S. {dollars} with the federal government’s Trade Fund on the mounted charge of HK$7.80 per greenback and receives Certificates of Indebtedness in return, in opposition to which it prints banknotes.
Yue drew the parallel in a December 2023 weblog put up.
Pre-1935 banknotes issued by business banks in trade for deposited silver had been a type of “non-public cash,” Yue wrote, and stablecoins operate as their blockchain-based equal — tokens with secure worth that may function a medium of trade on-chain.
A strict identification regime
The licenses include one of many world’s strictest KYC frameworks for digital cash.
Underneath the HKMA’s AML tips, licensed stablecoins can solely be transferred to wallets whose homeowners have been identity-verified. The journey rule applies to transfers above HK$8,000 (~$1,000).
In follow, this implies HKD stablecoins will seemingly embed compliance checks into their good contracts, limiting transfers to wallets listed in an on-chain white checklist. That makes them structurally totally different from freely transferable tokens like USDT or USDC.
A HKD CBDC takes a again seat
The bank-led stablecoin mannequin additionally displays the HKMA’s resolution to deprioritize its central financial institution digital foreign money for retail use, as an 11-group pilot program accomplished in October discovered the retail case was weak.
CBDCs have traditionally been a giant theme at Hong Kong Fintech Week. Final yr, there was barely a point out. As an alternative, stablecoins had been the recent subject.
Normal Chartered CEO Invoice Winters stated on the time Hong Kong’s push into stablecoins and tokenized deposits may “lay the muse for a brand new period of digital commerce settlement,” positioning them as a brand new medium for cross-border commerce.
Whether or not the market agrees stays to be seen.
Stablecoins are a roughly $310 billion asset class, and USD-denominated tokens dominate almost all of it.
Knowledge from CoinGecko reveals that the biggest stablecoins by market cap are dollar-pegged, with no euro-or yen-pegged tokens breaking into the highest ranks.
Hong Kong is betting that regulated, bank-issued HKD stablecoins can carve out a job in regional commerce settlement, issued by the identical establishments, below the identical constraints, on new rails.
The query is whether or not a non-dollar stablecoin, nevertheless tightly regulated, can construct the community results wanted to compete.