Hong Kong awarded its first two stablecoin issuer licenses to HSBC and Anchorpoint Financial, a Standard Chartered-led consortium that includes Animoca Brands, on Friday.
The approvals from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the territory’s central bank, mark the first batch under the Stablecoins Ordinance, which came into effect in August 2025.
“We look forward to the issuers starting business in accordance with their plans and exploring growth opportunities while properly managing risks,” HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue said in a statement on Friday.
“We hope that their promotion of regulated stablecoins will address pain points in financial and economic activities, create values for both individuals and businesses, and support the healthy development of digital assets in Hong Kong.”
The HKMA assessed 36 applications and had signaled that the initial round would be limited. Finance Minister Paul Chan said in his February Budget speech that only “a small number” would be approved, with the regulator prioritizing risk management, reserve quality and anti-money laundering controls.
The decision to license the city’s note-issuing banks appears at first to be deliberate. HSBC and Standard Chartered are two of only three commercial banks authorized to print Hong Kong dollar notes, a system dating to 1846 when private banks began issuing currency backed by silver deposits in the absence of a colonial central bank.
Today, each note-issuing bank deposits US dollars into the government’s Exchange Fund at the fixed rate of HK$7.80 per dollar. dollar and receives in return promissory notes against which it prints banknotes.
Yue drew the parallel in a December 2023 blog post.
Before 1935, banknotes issued by commercial banks in exchange for deposited silver were a form of “private money,” Yue wrote, and stablecoins serve as their blockchain-based equivalent — tokens with stable value that can serve as an on-chain medium of exchange.
A strict identity regime
The licenses come with one of the world’s strictest KYC frameworks for digital money.
According to HKMA’s AML guidelines, licensed stablecoins can only be transferred to wallets whose owners have been verified. The travel rule applies to transfers over HK$8,000 (~$1,000).
In practice, this means that HKD stablecoins will likely embed compliance checks into their smart contracts, restricting transfers to wallets that are whitelisted on the chain. This makes them structurally different from freely transferable tokens like USDT or USDC.
A HKD CBDC takes a back seat
The bank-led stablecoin model also reflects the HKMA’s decision to downgrade its central bank’s digital currency for retail use after an 11-group pilot program concluded in October found the retail case weak.
CBDCs have historically been a big theme at Hong Kong Fintech Week. Last year there was barely a mention. Instead, stablecoins were the hot topic.
Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters said at the time that Hong Kong’s push into stablecoins and tokenized deposits could “lay the foundations for a new era of digital trade settlement”, positioning them as a new medium for cross-border trade.
Whether the market agrees remains to be seen.
Stablecoins are a roughly $310 billion asset class, and USD-denominated tokens dominate almost all of it.
Data from CoinGecko shows that the largest stablecoins by market capitalization are dollar-pegged, with no euro- or yen-denominated tokens breaking into the top ranks.
Hong Kong is betting that regulated, bank-issued HKD stablecoins can play a role in regional trade settlement, issued by the same institutions, under the same restrictions, on new rails.
The question is whether a non-dollar stablecoin, however tightly regulated, can build the network effects necessary to compete.
