On April 10, 2026, Hong Kong's monetary authority granted the city's first two stablecoin issuer licenses — one to HSBC, the other to Anchorpoint Financial, a joint venture of Standard Chartered, HKT, and Animoca Brands. Of 36 formal applications received by the September 2025 deadline, only two ...
"The issuance of HKDAP provides a powerful regulated medium of exchange that will further the rewiring of our financial markets." — Bill Winters, Group CEO, Standard Chartered
On April 10, 2026, Hong Kong's monetary authority granted the city's first two stablecoin issuer licenses — one to HSBC, the other to Anchorpoint Financial, a joint venture of Standard Chartered, HKT, and Animoca Brands. Of 36 formal applications received by the September 2025 deadline, only two survived six months of review, a 5.6% approval rate that telegraphs the regime's intent: bank-led digital money, not crypto-native experimentation.
The licenses authorize both entities to issue Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoins backed 1:1 by high-quality liquid assets held in segregated accounts. HSBC plans to embed its token directly into PayMe (3.3 million users) and the HSBC HK App (which saw 20% year-over-year user growth as of January 2026). Anchorpoint will distribute its HKDAP token through a business-to-business-to-consumer model starting Q2 2026. Together, the two issuers will connect an estimated 10+ million Hong Kong residents to blockchain-based payments through existing banking infrastructure — without requiring a single crypto wallet download.
This marks a structural shift in the stablecoin market. The $315 billion global stablecoin sector has been dominated by crypto-native issuers — Tether and Circle — operating outside traditional banking perimeters. Hong Kong is the first major financial center to grant stablecoin licenses exclusively to incumbent banks in its inaugural round, a deliberate choice to prioritize balance-sheet credibility over fintech speed.
The Stablecoins Ordinance, passed in May 2025 and effective August 1, 2025, created the legal framework. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), led by Chief Executive Eddie Yue, set a September 30, 2025, deadline for initial applications. Thirty-six entities applied.
The HKMA took six months to evaluate applicants against two criteria: risk management capability and viable use cases with credible business plans. By April 10, 2026, only two licenses were issued — designated FRS01 (Anchorpoint Financial Limited) and FRS02 (The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited).
The HKMA's deputy chief executive explained the selection logic: successful applicants possessed "experience in traditional finance and risk management, which was suitable for the role of stablecoins as a bridge between traditional and digital finance." The message was unambiguous. Digital money in Hong Kong will be bank-led.
The authority has stated it will maintain an "open yet prudent" approach to future licensing, but indicated the total number of licensees will remain "very limited." Supervision will include on-site examinations, off-site reviews, and independent assessments — the same toolkit used for banking oversight.
HSBC, with $3.23 trillion in total assets as of September 2025, is deploying its stablecoin through channels it already controls. The bank's Hong Kong CEO Maggie Ng confirmed the token will launch in the second half of 2026 across two platforms:
Users will activate an in-app stablecoin wallet without downloading separate software. Top-ups will be available via cash balances, linked bank accounts, or credit cards at a 1:1 ratio with the Hong Kong dollar.
Three initial use cases are planned:
As HSBC co-CEO Surendra Rosha noted: "Stablecoin is not a deposit. It works by holding digital money instead of cash." This distinction matters. Stablecoins fall outside deposit insurance protections, a risk the HKMA has not required issuers to mitigate through insurance mechanisms.
The stablecoin fits within HSBC's broader digital asset portfolio, which already includes tokenized deposit services for corporates, digital bonds via the HSBC Orion platform for institutions, and the HSBC Gold Token for retail customers. The stablecoin extends this stack into everyday payments.
Anchorpoint Financial Limited — jointly owned by Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) as the largest shareholder, alongside HKT Limited and Animoca Brands — represents a different architecture for the same objective.
The venture began exploration in early 2023, entered the HKMA sandbox in 2024, and was formally established in February 2025. Its stablecoin, HKDAP (HKD At Par), will launch in phases from Q2 2026.
Anchorpoint CEO Dominic Maffei has described the product as "a secure, accessible and regulated form of tokenised money." The distribution model differs from HSBC's direct-to-consumer approach: Anchorpoint will operate through authorized distributors in a B2B2C framework, leveraging partner client bases for public access.
Target use cases skew institutional:
Standard Chartered CEO for Hong Kong and Greater China, Mary Huen, called the license "a new chapter for Hong Kong in advancing its digital assets ecosystem." The presence of Animoca Brands — a blockchain gaming and metaverse company — as a joint venture partner signals intent to extend stablecoin utility beyond traditional banking corridors into tokenized digital commerce.
The Stablecoins Ordinance imposes requirements that mirror banking-grade standards:
Capital Requirements:
Reserve Requirements:
Eligible Reserve Assets:
Compliance Infrastructure:
These requirements effectively price out most crypto-native issuers. A well-capitalized bank can absorb HK$25 million in share capital and 12 months of operating expense buffers. A startup cannot, at least not without the kind of venture backing that the HKMA's selection criteria appear designed to exclude.
The economic significance extends beyond Hong Kong's 7.4 million population.
Scale of Potential Distribution. HSBC alone serves over 7 million customers in Hong Kong. PayMe reaches 3.3 million. If even a fraction of those users activate stablecoin wallets, Hong Kong will become one of the first jurisdictions where bank-issued stablecoins circulate at retail scale. For context, the global stablecoin market processes up to $35 trillion in annual transaction volume, according to industry estimates. Hong Kong's cross-border remittance and trade finance flows — the city handled $728 billion in merchandise trade in 2024 — represent a material addressable market for HKD-denominated stablecoins.
Tokenized Asset Settlement. Both licensees have identified tokenized RWA settlement as a core use case. Hong Kong's tokenized asset market stood at approximately $25 billion in assets under management by mid-2025, with projections reaching $600 billion by 2030. Bank-issued stablecoins provide a regulated settlement layer for these assets, replacing the current reliance on crypto-native tokens that carry counterparty risk opaque to institutional compliance teams.
The Subsidy Question. The foundational economic question — consistent with economic value analysis of blockchain ecosystems — is whether these stablecoins generate self-sustaining revenue or require subsidy. Unlike crypto-native stablecoins that earn yield on reserves (Tether reported $13 billion in 2024 profits), bank-issued stablecoins face a structural tension: reserves held in segregated accounts, limited to short-duration government paper and cash, will yield less than the bank's own treasury operations. The stablecoin must justify itself through transaction volume and ecosystem lock-in, not reserve income. Whether HSBC and Standard Chartered can achieve unit economics without cross-subsidizing from other business lines remains an open question.
Hong Kong's decision to license only banks in the first round carries implications for the broader stablecoin market structure.
Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) dominate the $315 billion global stablecoin market. Neither applied for a Hong Kong license. Their business models — high-margin reserve management with minimal regulatory overhead — are structurally incompatible with the Stablecoins Ordinance's capital segregation and holder identification requirements.
The HKMA's framework implicitly classifies stablecoins as a banking function, not a fintech product. This aligns with a broader regulatory trend: the U.S. GENIUS Act, passed in 2025, treats permitted payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions subject to Bank Secrecy Act obligations. The EU's MiCA regulation imposes similar capital and reserve requirements.
If bank-issued stablecoins gain traction in Hong Kong, they could establish a template that other Asian financial centers — Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul — replicate. South Korea's Toss, with 30 million users, has already filed 24 trademarks for won-backed stablecoins and is evaluating its own blockchain mainnet. Japan reclassified cryptoassets as financial products in April 2026, opening a similar pathway.
The risk for crypto-native issuers is not displacement — Tether's $140+ billion in circulation is not threatened by a Hong Kong dollar token — but marginalization in the regulated financial system. As banks absorb the settlement and payment functions that stablecoins were built to serve, the crypto-native versions may be confined to trading venues and unregulated corridors.
Hong Kong has made a clear architectural choice: stablecoins are banking infrastructure, not crypto products. By licensing only HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led consortium, the HKMA has positioned incumbents as the gatekeepers of digital money in Asia's most established financial center.
The practical effect is that millions of Hong Kong residents will likely access blockchain-based payments through apps they already use, from institutions they already trust, without ever encountering a seed phrase or gas fee. This is the most direct path to stablecoin adoption at retail scale — and the most deliberate exclusion of crypto-native competitors from a regulated market.
Whether this model generates economic value proportionate to the infrastructure cost remains the central question. Bank-issued stablecoins must justify segregated reserves, compliance overhead, and capital requirements against transaction fee revenue that crypto-native alternatives capture at near-zero marginal cost. The next 12 months will determine whether Hong Kong's bank-first stablecoin regime produces a viable business model or an expensive regulatory exercise.