Weekly briefing · Edition 17 · 24 August 2026 · covering 18 to 24 August

The People's Bank of China to issue Renminbi Bills through HKMA's Central Moneymarkets Unit

Edited by Cliffton Lee · Singapore · 18 items covered from 475 sources reviewed

Key points

The European Central Bank named the first four DLT operators for Project Pontes ahead of its 21 September 2026 go-live, Axiology, Clearstream, Cashlink, and SWIAT, and revealed the 61-member Appia contact group that will steer the EU's future market infrastructure, including stablecoin issuers Qivalis and Societe Generale Forge alongside Euroclear, Swift, and Fnality.
HSBC and Standard Chartered executed the first live tokenised deposit transfer across Swift's blockchain ledger, breaking the single-bank silo that has confined tokenised deposits to same-bank transfers, a month after Swift's minimum viable product went live with 17 banks preparing to pilot.
The People's Bank of China will issue Renminbi Bills through the HKMA's Central Moneymarkets Unit, routing sovereign RMB liquidity through Hong Kong's settlement infrastructure, while China expanded its digital RMB bank roster to 30 institutions and added 8 more banks to the e-CNY network this week.
The US Treasury issued its GENIUS Act Section 3 rulemaking with a 60-day comment period, setting an expected 18 January 2027 effective date, and the OCC confirmed final stablecoin rules by November 2026 with 23 of 40 recent bank-charter applications involving digital-asset activity.
Standard Chartered became the first G-SIB and first UK issuer of a digital bond on Euroclear's D-FMI, a three-year $200 million floating-rate note it intends to admit to the London Stock Exchange's International Securities Market.

Around it, HSBC and Standard Chartered broke the single-bank tokenised-deposit silo with the first live transfer across Swift's blockchain ledger, the People's Bank of China moved to issue Renminbi Bills through Hong Kong's Central Moneymarkets Unit, and the US Treasury and OCC both put firm 2026-2027 dates on GENIUS Act stablecoin rules.

What's new in Asia

The People's Bank of China to issue Renminbi Bills through HKMA's Central Moneymarkets Unit ↗
HK
The PBOC will route sovereign RMB bill issuance through the HKMA's Central Moneymarkets Unit (CMU), placing offshore renminbi liquidity and settlement on Hong Kong's institutional infrastructure rather than mainland-only rails. For a treasury or funding desk in Hong Kong, this creates a directly-held, CMU-settled RMB instrument that can anchor offshore renminbi collateral pools and short-dated liquidity management, the missing high-quality-liquid-asset leg for RMB-denominated tokenised programmes.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
a CMU-settled PBOC bill gives offshore RMB books a sovereign HQLA leg they have lacked, so revisit which RMB collateral currently carries a punitive haircut and whether this instrument reprices it. The settlement venue matters as much as the issuer here, since CMU connectivity is what lets the bill slot into existing Hong Kong custody and repo workflows.
Regulatory & policy affairs
Hong Kong is positioning CMU as the offshore renminbi settlement hub with Beijing's direct participation, which sharpens the case for domiciling RMB-denominated tokenised issuance in Hong Kong rather than Singapore. Map how this interacts with mBridge under post-graduation governance before committing a programme's settlement architecture.
HashKey deploys Hong Kong's first regulated stablecoin to settle insurance and trade deals ↗
HK
HashKey is using Hong Kong's first regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin to settle live insurance and trade-finance flows, moving the HKMA licensing regime from mint-and-redeem demonstration into named commercial use cases. This is the operational-participation signal that separates a licensed issuer from a settling one, and it gives product teams a working reference for HKD-stablecoin settlement in regulated non-crypto flows.
What this means
Product ownerstablecoin
a live insurance and trade-finance settlement case is the distribution proof HKD stablecoin issuers needed, so re-scope which regulated commercial flows are addressable now rather than after the next licensing cohort. The insurance leg in particular implies premium and claims settlement, a recurring high-volume use case worth modelling.
Distribution & BD
trade finance and insurance are the corporate relationships where a regulated HKD rail can displace correspondent settlement, so re-price which counterparty conversations move from pilot to production on this evidence.
China expands digital RMB support to 30 banks, adding 8 this week ↗
CN
The PBOC added 8 mainly regional banks to the digital RMB roster, taking participation from 22 in March to 30, with the currency now structured as a commercial-bank digital deposit rather than a direct central-bank liability. The eight named additions this week, part of a separate e-CNY network expansion, show sustained rather than one-off institutional uptake, and the deposit structure means participating banks can pay interest, which changes the treasury calculus versus a zero-yield CBDC.
What this means
Product ownertokenised deposit
the digital RMB is now a bank-deposit liability that can bear interest, so treat it as a tokenised-deposit competitor in the mainland rather than a state-run CBDC to route around. Model where an interest-bearing state-backed rail competes directly with a commercial tokenised-deposit offering on the same corridor.
Infrastructure & platform
roster expansion to 30 banks signals the connectivity spec is stabilising, so prioritise mapping the integration requirements for regional-bank participation before a client asks for e-CNY acceptance.
Singapore consortium launches Project Pigeon for permissionless-blockchain governance ↗
SG
Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow and a coalition of banks, crypto-native firms, and exchanges launched Project Pigeon, a working group building governance frameworks for APAC financial institutions using permissionless chains. The Basel Committee treats securities on permissionless chains as equivalent to Bitcoin for capital purposes, which is prohibitive, and Pigeon is where the workaround gets designed while HKMA-approved stablecoin issuers and US banks already have explicit permissionless carve-outs and MAS has delayed its own rulemaking into consultation.
What this means
Compliance, legal & risk
the Basel capital treatment of permissionless-chain securities is the live constraint, so track whether Pigeon's framework produces a defensible governance model that supervisors accept ahead of the Committee's expedited review. The divergence between HKMA's carve-out and MAS's delayed rulemaking is a real jurisdictional fork to plan around.
Infrastructure & platform
if a permissionless deployment is on the roadmap, the governance controls Pigeon defines are what a Singapore supervisor will expect to see, so build against that rather than a permissioned-only assumption.

Global news

Payments & settlement

HSBC and Standard Chartered make first live tokenised deposit transfer via Swift's blockchain ↗
GB
HSBC and Standard Chartered executed the first live tokenised deposit transaction across Swift's blockchain ledger, enabling a transfer between customers of different banks rather than the same-bank silo that has confined almost all tokenised deposits to date. It follows Swift's July minimum-viable-product launch with 17 banks across six continents preparing to pilot, and the one-month gap from MVP to live transaction is fast for institutions this size, helped by both banks' prior work in the HKMA's Ensemble programme and the UK's GBTD and US Clearing House initiatives.
What this means
Product ownertokenised deposit
cross-bank interoperability removes the single-biggest limit on tokenised-deposit utility, so revisit whether a proprietary single-bank rail still justifies its build cost against a Swift-interoperable model. The relevant question is now reach across counterparties, not settlement speed within one bank.
Infrastructure & platform
Swift is positioning its ledger as the interoperability layer between bank silos, so treat connectivity to it as a near-term integration decision rather than a someday item, especially given 17 banks are already queued to pilot.
Treasury & allocator
a 24/7 cross-border tokenised-deposit rail across different banks changes the correspondent-banking calculus for multi-bank treasury operations, so model where it compresses settlement time and removes an intermediary hop.
Ant International partners Bank of China Hong Kong on cross-border payments including tokenisation ↗
SG
Ant International and Bank of China Hong Kong agreed a broad collaboration on real-time treasury and cross-border payments, with Ant's Bettr embedded-finance arm exploring blockchain for treasury and investment. Ant has been the anchor first client for tokenised-deposit solutions at BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, DBS, HSBC, JPMorgan, OCBC, Standard Chartered, and UBS, integrating them into its Ant Whale treasury system, so a BOCHK tie adds a major mainland-linked bank to that roster and extends Ant's move into tokenised money-market funds for yield on idle cash.
What this means
Distribution & BD
Ant is the reference corporate client that validates a bank's tokenised-deposit offering, so re-price how a BOCHK relationship shifts competitive positioning for banks not yet on Ant's list.
Treasury & allocator
Ant's use of tokenised MMFs to earn yield on treasury pools is the operational pattern to study, since it shows how a large corporate treasurer sequences tokenised deposits for movement and tokenised funds for yield.
Visa seeks new stablecoin settlement partner after BVNK sale to Mastercard ↗
Global
Visa issued a request for product seeking a settlement and over-the-counter partner with cryptocurrency-exchange licences across the US, Canada, UK, and Singapore, to fill the role BVNK held before Mastercard acquired it. The partner will also handle settlement for Open USD, the multi-stablecoin project fronted by Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard, and the four-jurisdiction licensing requirement narrows the eligible field sharply.
What this means
Founder & strategy
the four-market licensing bar is the real filter, so for a stablecoin-infrastructure firm the question is whether multi-jurisdiction licences are now the price of entry to card-network settlement mandates. BVNK's absorption into Mastercard also signals the consolidation direction for this layer.
Product ownerstablecoin
Open USD's multi-stablecoin design means Visa is building for token-agnostic settlement, so re-scope whether a single-issuer integration still fits where the card networks are heading.

Issuance & funds

Standard Chartered becomes first G-SIB issuer of a digital bond on Euroclear's D-FMI ↗
GB
Standard Chartered issued a three-year $200 million digitally native note on Euroclear's D-FMI, the first by a G-SIB and the first by a UK issuer on the platform, and has applied to admit it to trading on the London Stock Exchange's International Securities Market. The bank acted as sole dealer, building on earlier D-FMI mandates for Emirates NBD and Doha Bank, with a fresh link in Usman Ahmad, who led the bank's Zodia Markets and is now head of digital assets at Euroclear.
What this means
Product ownertokenised bond
a G-SIB integrating digitally native issuance into an established funding programme, with LSE admission, is the template for making tokenised bonds fit existing investor workflows rather than sit apart, so map how the ISM listing route works for a comparable programme.
Treasury & allocator
a $200 million floating-rate note that settles on regulated D-FMI infrastructure with conventional secondary-market access lowers the operational objection to holding tokenised paper, so revisit whether the fixed-income mandate still excludes digitally native notes.
Shinhan Asset Management partners Solana for offshore tokenised Korean won fund ↗
KR
Shinhan AM signed a nonbinding agreement with the Solana Foundation, Orca, and Etherfuse for a proof of concept on a Korean won tokenised money-market fund targeting offshore institutional investors, the third chain the manager has explored after a Plume MOU last week and a Canton Foundation deal in June. The PoC covers KYC, AML, Korean foreign-exchange law, security audits, and onchain liquidity via the Orca DEX, with Etherfuse as tokenisation partner given it already offers tokenised sovereign bonds in six currencies including the won.
What this means
Product ownertokenised fund
three chain partnerships in three months signals Shinhan is optimising for offshore distribution reach rather than committing to one settlement venue, so treat multi-chain issuance as the emerging default for offshore-targeted KRW funds. The FX-law leg is the binding constraint here, not the tokenisation mechanics.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the PoC's explicit treatment of Korean foreign-exchange law for offshore KRW flows is the piece worth watching, since it tests whether a won-denominated tokenised fund can reach non-resident investors without tripping capital-flow controls.
Toyota Finance sells second digital bond directly to retail via mobile app ↗
JP
Toyota Finance launched a ¥1 billion ($6.3 million) one-year digital bond sold directly to retail through the TOYOTA Wallet app, bypassing the securities firms that distributed its March 2025 issuance, a first for the Toyota Group. Investors need no brokerage account and enter a lottery for allocation, with applications open until 2 September and issuance on 27 October.
What this means
Distribution & BD
disintermediating the securities firm for a tokenised retail bond is the model to study, since it shows an issuer using its own app as the primary-distribution channel and capturing the intermediary margin.
Product ownertokenised bond
the deliberately small, experimental size signals this is a distribution-mechanism test, not a funding exercise, so watch whether the self-distribution economics justify scaling before drawing conclusions.

Regulatory & licensing

US Treasury issues GENIUS Act rulemaking for payment stablecoin issuance ↗
US
The Treasury's notice of proposed rulemaking covers Section 3 of the GENIUS Act, defining the jurisdictional trigger for a covered payment stablecoin as one issued in the US or to a person located in the US, with a 60-day comment period. The requirement to use only regulated payment stablecoins commences on the expected 18 January 2027 effective date, alongside the rule on which foreign stablecoins can be sold, though crypto exchanges get another 18 months before offering a non-permitted stablecoin to a US person becomes unlawful.
What this means
Product ownerstablecoin
the 18 January 2027 effective date for regulated-only usage and the foreign-issuer cutoff are now firm planning anchors, so put a compliance timeline against them rather than waiting for the CLARITY Act. The jurisdictional trigger based on issuance location and recipient presence needs testing against real distribution flows.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the divergence between the 18 January 2027 foreign-stablecoin cutoff and the 18-month exchange leeway creates a transition window worth mapping, since it affects when non-permitted coins actually leave US-facing venues.
OCC confirms final stablecoin rules by November, crypto is "part of the business of banking" ↗
US
Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the OCC targets final stablecoin rules by November 2026, allowing it to begin processing issuer applications in the new year, and revealed that 23 of 40 bank-charter applications over the past 18 months involve digital-asset activity, an eightfold increase over the prior administration. Gould framed the OCC's forthcoming role supervising stablecoin reserves under the GENIUS Act as a return to its 1860s mission of ensuring the quality of reserves backing national bank notes.
What this means
Founder & strategy
a November final-rule date and a new-year application window make a national trust or bank charter a concrete near-term path for stablecoin issuers, so re-price whether a federal charter beats a state route on the timeline now visible.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the OCC framing stablecoin supervision as core banking, not a crypto carve-out, signals the reserve-quality standard will be the load-bearing requirement, so read the November rule for its reserve-composition detail first.
SEC proposes Regulation Crypto Assets ↗
US
The SEC announced formal rulemaking on when a crypto token is caught by securities laws and when that status ends, plus two fundraising exemptions including a Regulation A variant, largely codifying its March interpretation. Chair Atkins framed the move as acting under current statutory authority while the CLARITY Act stalls, and the rules would protect issuers relying on them in a way an interpretation from a future SEC could not, though they offer no shield from third-party litigation.
What this means
Compliance, legal & risk
a codified rule offers issuers durable protection an interpretation cannot, so revisit whether a token programme previously structured around the March interpretation should be re-papered against the proposed rule once finalised. The third-party litigation exposure remains, which is the gap to plan around.
Founder & strategy
two fundraising exemptions materially change the domestic capital-formation calculus for token issuers who went offshore, so re-scope whether a US raise is now viable under the Regulation A variant.
FASB proposes treating stablecoins as cash equivalents ↗
Global
The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed letting companies classify certain stablecoin holdings as cash equivalents, provided the holder has a direct issuer relationship and an on-demand redemption right for a specific cash amount, with segregated reserves held one-to-one in short-term liquid assets. Current treatment has been inconsistent, with some entities marking stablecoins as intangibles and others as receivables, and lender liquidity calculations favour cash equivalents far more than intangibles.
What this means
Treasury & allocator
cash-equivalent classification removes the balance-sheet penalty that has kept corporate treasuries out of stablecoins, so revisit whether the cash-management mandate can now hold qualifying stablecoins without an intangible-asset write-down risk. The direct-issuer and on-demand-redemption conditions narrow which stablecoins qualify, so check them against holdings.
Compliance, legal & risk
the proposal raises open questions its authors flag, including whether third-party redemption suffices and whether every major issuer meets the segregated-reserve test, so carry those as unresolved items rather than assumptions when scoping treatment.
Nomura-backed Laser Digital wins Japan's first crypto approval in four years ↗
JP
Nomura-backed Laser Digital secured Japan's first crypto licence in four years, signalling a reopening of the FSA's approval pipeline with a major bank's backing behind it. For institutional players, a Nomura-affiliated licensee is an operational-participation signal that separates Japan's cautious posture from a genuine market reopening.
What this means
Regulatory & policy affairs
a four-year gap ending with a bank-backed licensee suggests the FSA is reopening deliberately rather than broadly, so read the licence conditions for what activities Japan is actually reauthorising before assuming the pipeline is open.
Founder & strategy
Nomura's backing behind the first approval in four years re-prices Japan as an addressable market for institutional crypto and tokenisation, so revisit whether a Japan entry timeline moves forward.

Infrastructure & custody

ECB names first four DLT operators for Pontes and reveals the Appia contact group ↗
EU
Ahead of the 21 September go-live, the ECB named Axiology, Clearstream, Cashlink, and SWIAT as the first four DLT operators for Pontes, a cross-section spanning an established central securities depository to a DLT Pilot Regime startup, and published the 61-member Appia contact group tasked with developing the EU's future financial market infrastructure. Pontes offers two settlement modes, a trigger into TARGET2 and DLT-based cash tokens representing T2 balances, and the Appia group folds in alternative settlement paths including stablecoin issuers Qivalis and Societe Generale Forge and Fnality alongside Clearstream, Euroclear, Eurex, Euronext, Swift, Tradeweb, ESMA, and the European Commission.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
the four named operators are the certified on-ramps to tokenised central bank money settlement, so if a European tokenised-securities programme needs cash-leg settlement, connectivity to one of them is now the concrete integration decision. Axiology is still completing certification, so operator readiness varies and should be checked before committing.
Product ownertokenised bond
Pontes going live with two settlement modes means digital securities can finally settle against central bank money in the safest form, so revisit whether a euro-denominated tokenised-bond programme should target the 21 September launch cohort or wait for a later operator to certify.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the Appia group's inclusion of stablecoin issuers and Fnality alongside CSDs signals the ECB is designing for a mixed settlement landscape rather than wCBDC alone, so read the group's remit for how it treats stablecoins as a settlement path in the EU's future infrastructure.
Collateral & funding desk
DLT cash tokens representing T2 balances are wholesale central bank money on-chain, so work through how they would function as settlement collateral in a tokenised repo or securities-financing flow before a counterparty proposes it.
Clearstream extends tokenisation to settlement, custody, and collateral across €22 trillion of assets ↗
EU
Clearstream will let clients tokenise portions of the €22 trillion it custodies, with issuances lined up for later this year, consolidating its DLT activity since 2018 into an end-to-end offering built on Besu to comply with Europe's CSDR permissioned-chain requirement. It starts with fixed income, tokenised money-market funds, and retail structured products rather than equities, which Thilo Derenbach described as harder given their infinite range of corporate actions, a different starting point from the DTCC's plan to tokenise the 1,000 largest equities and Treasuries.
What this means
Product ownertokenised fund
a major CSD offering end-to-end tokenisation for MMFs and fixed income, not just issuance, removes the settlement-and-custody gap that has kept tokenised funds partial, so map how Clearstream's full-lifecycle model changes the build-versus-integrate decision.
Infrastructure & platform
the Besu choice for CSDR compliance and interoperability is the reference architecture for a permissioned European deployment, so weigh it against the DTCC's permissionless-capable approach when designing for cross-FMI connectivity.
Collateral & funding desk
extending tokenisation to collateral across a €22 trillion custody pool signals mobilising tokenised collateral at scale is near, so revisit how tokenised securities from Clearstream would slot into existing collateral-management workflows.
Citi plans to launch crypto custody this year ↗
US
Citi will support cryptocurrency custody later this year through its new Custody+ platform, starting with Bitcoin and integrating crypto with traditional custody, making it the largest US bank by assets to do so after BNY and US Bank went live. Citi held $34.5 trillion in assets under custody and administration at the end of June 2026, and the launch follows the rescission of SAB 121, the accounting rule that made bank custody financially prohibitive until early last year.
What this means
Treasury & allocator
a third major US custodian entering crypto custody widens the approved-custodian field for institutional digital-asset holdings, so check whether the mandate's G-SIB-custody requirement is now satisfied by more than one name. Citi's integrated crypto-plus-traditional model matters for allocators wanting one custody relationship.
Infrastructure & platform
the SAB 121 rescission removing the balance-sheet penalty is the enabling change here, so treat bank-grade custody for digital assets as a maturing rather than experimental capability when scoping counterparty options.

Worth watching next

Whether Pontes launches on schedule on 21 September with all four named operators certified, and which euro-denominated tokenised-bond programmes settle in the first cohort.
How fast the 17 banks queued for Swift’s blockchain ledger move from pilot to live cross-bank tokenised-deposit transfers after the HSBC and Standard Chartered milestone.
The first Renminbi Bill issuance through the HKMA‘s CMU, and whether it anchors offshore RMB collateral pools for Hong Kong tokenised programmes.
Whether the OCC’s November stablecoin final rule and the Treasury’s 18 January 2027 GENIUS Act effective date hold, and which issuers file for national charters in the new year.

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Editorially independent. Not investment advice.