Weekly briefing · Edition 21 · 21 September 2026 · covering 15 to 21 September

HKMA plans wholesale CBDC by year-end to settle tokenised deposits and test government bills

Edited by Cliffton Lee · Singapore · 18 items covered from 460 sources reviewed

Key points

The SEC issued its long-awaited innovation exemption on 17 September 2026, granting Tokenized Securities Venues a five-year conditional exemption from exchange registration to trade tokenised NMS stocks through automated market makers on public permissionless blockchains, provided the tokens carry full shareholder rights including dividends and voting.
Hong Kong's Chief Executive announced in his 2026 policy address that the HKMA plans to make a wholesale CBDC available for interbank settlement of tokenised deposits under Project EnsembleTX by year-end, removing the RTGS operating-hours constraint that has capped 24/7 settlement.
Partior and LSEG's Digital Settlement House will build a Multi-Settlement Bank solution letting Partior's settlement banks DBS, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered net and settle bilateral interbank balances around the clock, with industry testing underway and go-live targeted for Q1 2027.
Circle launched its Arc blockchain on 16 September 2026 with more than 100 institutions live or exploring, founding validators including BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Standard Chartered and Visa, USDC as the gas token, and BlackRock and Janus Henderson tokenised funds supported at launch.
BlackRock received SFC authorisation for the BlackRock HKD Digital Liquidity Fund, its first tokenised fund in Asia Pacific and a fourth currency for its MMF suite, with Standard Chartered as custodian, administrator, trustee and tokenisation partner and subscriptions accepted in the Anchorpoint-issued HKDAP stablecoin.

The order draws a sharp line between real tokens that pass through full shareholder rights and synthetic price-tracking products, which it excludes, and it lands days after the Clarity Act cloture vote failed at 49 to 50 in the Senate. Hong Kong moved on the settlement layer in parallel, the HKMA committing to a wholesale CBDC for interbank tokenised-deposit settlement by year-end, and Circle launched its Arc blockchain with more than 100 named institutions.

What's new in Asia

HKMA plans wholesale CBDC by year-end to settle tokenised deposits and test government bills ↗
Hong Kong
Announced in the Chief Executive's 2026 policy address, the HKMA will make a wholesale CBDC available for interbank settlement of tokenised deposits under Project EnsembleTX, replacing the conventional RTGS leg that has confined the late-2025 live pilot to RTGS operating hours. The same wCBDC is slated to settle HKEX after-hours derivatives trading, with real-value transactions targeted this year, so the operational shift for a bank on the Ensemble rail is that always-on interbank settlement stops being a dependency on the clearing window.
What this means
Product ownertokenised deposit
the 24/7 constraint that made single-bank tokenised deposits a walled garden loosens once wCBDC carries the interbank leg, so re-scope the client value proposition around genuine round-the-clock cross-bank payment rather than intra-bank transfer. Map which corporate treasury use cases only work with weekend and after-hours finality, since those are the flows that justify moving onto Ensemble first.
Collateral & funding desk
wCBDC settling HKEX after-hours derivatives changes the intraday-liquidity picture for margin, since a position moved outside RTGS hours no longer waits on the next clearing window. Work out the liquidity buffer a 24/7 settlement obligation actually requires before the go-live date forces the question.
BlackRock wins SFC nod for first tokenised fund in Asia Pacific, retail-accessible with stablecoin rails ↗
Hong Kong
The SFC authorised the BlackRock HKD Digital Liquidity Fund, a HKD money-market fund investing in short-term government bills and deposits, with Standard Chartered acting as custodian, fund administrator, trustee and tokenisation partner across the full stack. Investors can subscribe and redeem in fiat or in HKDAP, the regulated HKD stablecoin from the Standard Chartered-led Anchorpoint, making this the first commercial deployment of HKDAP as a bank-distributed settlement asset and adding a fourth currency to a BlackRock MMF suite that runs on Securitize and BNY in the US and Kinexys in Europe.
What this means
Product ownertokenised fund
the single-provider model, with Standard Chartered owning administration, custody, trustee and tokenisation, is a structurally different build from the US Securitize-plus-BNY split and the European Kinexys layer, so compare the operational overhead and counterparty concentration before assuming the American template travels to Asia. HKDAP as an accepted subscription asset means the fund and the stablecoin now share a distribution economics question worth modelling jointly.
Distribution & BD
retail accessibility under SFC authorisation is the part most peers lack elsewhere, so treat Hong Kong as a live test of whether tokenised MMF distribution scales beyond professional investors. The HKDAP redemption path is the differentiator to lead with when the wholesale-only comparison comes up.
Regulatory & policy affairs
an SFC-authorised retail tokenised fund puts Hong Kong ahead of Singapore on the retail-access calendar for tokenised MMFs, worth weighing against MAS positioning when choosing the first domicile for a regional launch.
Partior and LSEG DiSH to net interbank liquidity around the clock, go-live Q1 2027 ↗
Singapore
Partior and LSEG's Digital Settlement House are building a Multi-Settlement Bank solution that lets Partior's four settlement banks DBS, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered aggregate and settle their bilateral interbank balances through DiSH omnibus trust accounts, addressing the gap where a client payment settles instantly on Partior but the settlement banks still square up over conventional rails outside business hours. Industry testing is underway with go-live expected in Q1 2027, and the combination reduces dependence on payment cut-offs and pre-funded bilateral nostro relationships.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
the residual friction in Partior was always the settlement banks squaring bilateral balances outside RTGS hours through pre-funding or intraday credit, so re-price the cost of the nostro balances and credit lines DiSH netting is designed to displace. If the Q1 2027 timeline holds, the always-on liquidity pool changes what a settlement bank needs to reserve against off-hours flow.
Infrastructure & platform
DiSH tackles the liquidity-silo problem by letting banks draw on one balance pool across networks rather than pre-funding each rail separately, so assess whether the omnibus trust-account design is a template for connecting other DLT settlement platforms you already run. The engineering question is how the trust-account layer reconciles against Partior's clearing ledger.

Global news

Payments & settlement

SWIFT blockchain ledger enters trials with Citi and MUFG for 24-hour cross-border payments ↗
Global
SWIFT has begun trialling a blockchain-based digital ledger for always-on cross-border transfers, with Citi and MUFG among the participating banks, aimed at faster settlement and lower fees when branches are closed. The same ledger already carries live domestic and cross-border tokenised-deposit flows for Singapore's three local banks, so this trial extends its reach into the correspondent-banking backbone through two watched institutions.
What this means
Product ownertokenised deposit
SWIFT positioning its ledger as the interoperability layer across both domestic and cross-border legs means the build-versus-connect question shifts, so weigh whether a bespoke scheme still earns its cost against joining an established messaging network's rail. Watch which currencies the Citi-MUFG leg supports, since that shapes the FX and settlement-time case for JPY corridors.
Treasury & allocator
always-on cross-border settlement through the incumbent messaging network compresses the correspondent-banking hop, so model the working-capital gain from weekend and after-hours USD-JPY settlement for clients running treasury across both regions.
Partior and LSEG DiSH tackle the interbank settlement gap with always-on liquidity ↗
Global
The tie-up lets Partior's settlement banks pool interbank balances through LSEG DiSH trust accounts and settle among themselves around the clock, with industry testing running now and go-live targeted for Q1 2027. This is the same programme detailed in the Asia band, covered here for the correspondent-banking dimension that reaches Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan on the settlement side.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
the piece that traps liquidity in DLT platforms is per-network pre-funding, so re-examine the nostro balances held against Partior flow once a shared pool can be drawn across networks. The netting design is the number to model before Q1 2027.

Issuance & funds

WisdomTree and MoonPay to widen US access to tokenised MMF WTGXX and back stablecoin reserves ↗
US
WisdomTree will build an access point for its WisdomTree Treasury Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX) through MoonPay's network of more than 35 million accounts, and MoonPay plans to use WTGXX as part of its stablecoin reserve management. The pairing takes a tokenised MMF into a large fintech distribution channel while simultaneously plugging the fund into a stablecoin issuer's reserve stack, a two-sided demand structure.
What this means
Distribution & BD
MoonPay's 35-million-account reach is a distribution surface an asset manager rarely gets to a tokenised fund directly, so reassess whether fintech partnerships beat traditional broker channels for retail tokenised-MMF onboarding. The reserve-management leg gives WisdomTree a demand anchor most tokenised funds lack.
Product ownertokenised fund
a tokenised MMF doubling as a stablecoin's yield-bearing reserve asset ties the fund's AUM to the issuer's float, so model how MoonPay's reserve flows affect subscription and redemption volatility before treating them as sticky capital.

Regulatory & licensing

SEC issues innovation exemption to facilitate onchain trading of tokenised NMS stock ↗
US
The SEC granted a temporary, conditional five-year exemption from the definition of exchange to Tokenized Securities Venues, letting them provide automated market makers and liquidity pools for tokenised exchange-listed stocks without registering as an exchange, and letting qualifying liquidity providers escape dealer registration. Tokens must preserve full shareholder rights including dividends and voting, synthetic price-tracking products are excluded, trading is permissioned even on public permissionless chains, and the order caps trading volumes and the number of symbols a venue can list. Chairman Paul Atkins framed it as bringing capital markets onchain within the agency's statutory authority, and it arrives just after the Clarity Act cloture vote fell short at 49 to 50, which had been the intended statutory home for tokenised-securities relief.
What this means
Product ownertokenised equity
the full-rights requirement is the gate, so audit whether an existing token product passes through dividends and voting or merely tracks price, since the synthetic structure at the centre of the recent AMC-Robinhood dispute sits outside the exemption entirely. Robinhood, Kraken and Ondo price-exposure products would need redesign to enter under this framework, while issuer-sponsored and custodial full-rights models qualify.
Infrastructure & platform
the framework is built around AMMs rather than central limit order books, so a venue running an order-book exchange, Coinbase among them, cannot slot straight in, and the build question is whether to stand up an AMM venue or wait. Permissioned trading on permissionless chains means KYC and access controls sit on top of the public rail, which is a specific engineering pattern to design against.
Compliance, legal & risk
the 30-day notice-and-objection window gives the underlying stock issuer a veto over third-party tokenisation, so build the issuer-notification workflow before listing any token you did not originate. The five-year sunset and the request for comment mean this is a sandbox, not settled law, so document assumptions that a permanent regime might revise.
Regulatory & policy affairs
with the Clarity Act stalled at 49 to 50, the SEC has moved via exemptive order rather than statute, so weigh how durable a five-year conditional carve-out is against a legislated framework when choosing where to domicile a tokenised-equity programme. Offshore jurisdictions with existing statutory frameworks remain the alternative if US relief stays provisional.
Analysts flag Coinbase, Robinhood and Circle as early beneficiaries of the SEC tokenised-stock push ↗
US
Goldman Sachs and Citizens analysts read the exemption as opening opportunities in custody, tokenisation infrastructure and stablecoin settlement, with Coinbase positioned across custody, its Coinbase Tokenize infrastructure and Base, Robinhood needing to add shareholder rights to make its tokens compliant, and Circle standing to gain from USDC used as settlement and collateral. The analysts note trading caps, issuer opt-outs and the AMM-versus-order-book mismatch will limit how fast incumbents can move.
What this means
Founder & strategy
the analyst framing is worth reading as an engaged map of where value accrues under the exemption, with the caveat that a bank research note credits the firms it covers, so test the custody-plus-infrastructure thesis against your own stack rather than adopting the ranking wholesale. Circle's USDC-as-settlement angle connects directly to its Arc launch this week, which is the piece to weigh together.
Product ownerstablecoin
if tokenised-stock venues settle in USDC, the exemption is a demand channel for regulated dollar stablecoins, so estimate the settlement and collateral volume a live TSV could route before assuming it is marginal.
SEC exemption confirms third-party tokens qualify only with full rights ↗
US
The order confirms the exemption is not restricted to issuer-sponsored tokens, so DTC-minted, custodian-issued or broker-issued tokens can qualify provided they pass through full shareholder rights including voting and the underlying stock issuer does not object within the 30-day notice window. Synthetic tokens representing a different issuer's debt backed one-for-one with the stock, the structure disputed in the recent AMC-Robinhood exchange, are excluded from relief.
What this means
Product ownertokenised equity
the DTC and custodian routes qualifying opens a path for tokens minted by market infrastructure rather than the issuer, so revisit whether partnering with a transfer agent or the depository beats building issuer-by-issuer consent. The DTC tokenisation service launching in October becomes a direct feedstock for a compliant venue.
Compliance, legal & risk
the issuer-objection right applies even to third-party tokens, so the notification and 30-day wait is a hard gate on any token you did not originate, and the workflow needs building before a listing pipeline exists.
What institutions actually lost when the Clarity Act cloture vote failed ↗
US
The Senate cloture vote fell short at 49 to 50 on 16 September, far below the 60 needed, over Democratic ethics objections and Republican concerns on stablecoin interest, and the failure leaves exposed a bill that went well beyond market structure to enshrine bank permissions for crypto custody, brokerage, node operation, crypto collateral for lending, derivatives and customer-driven market making. Politico reported several Republican yes-voters still expect changes to accommodate banking-industry concerns, and the read is that offshore jurisdictions with existing statutory frameworks gain relative ground while investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley lose statutory cover for the collateral and market-making permissions the bill contained.
What this means
Regulatory & policy affairs
the permissions banks wanted, crypto collateral for lending, derivatives and market making, remain governed by supervisory interpretation rather than statute, so map which activities your institution now runs on regulator comfort alone and where that comfort could shift. Jurisdictions with codified frameworks become the fallback for activities the Clarity Act would have blessed.
Collateral & funding desk
the section allowing banks to hold crypto collateral for lending and derivatives is now absent from law, so re-examine the legal basis for any crypto-collateral programme built on the expectation of statutory cover.
Canadian regulator OSFI confirms tokenised deposits get equivalent treatment ↗
Canada
OSFI clarified that using blockchain does not change the nature of a deposit under the Bank Act, though it stops short of binding law and advises banks to seek legal advice, and it leaves deposit-insurance treatment to the CDIC, which has not explicitly addressed tokenised deposits. Canada takes the fast supervisory-interpretation route where the US GENIUS Act writes the same clarity into statute and the FDIC's proposed rulemaking extends deposit insurance regardless of recording technology.
What this means
Compliance, legal & risk
a supervisory interpretation is faster but softer than statute, so treat the OSFI position as guidance to confirm against your own legal advice rather than settled protection, particularly on the unresolved CDIC deposit-insurance question. The insurance gap is the specific point to raise before treating a tokenised deposit as equivalent for capital and liquidity purposes.
UK collateral-first tokenisation feedback runs into the settlement-finality gap ↗
UK
Responses to the Bank of England and FCA call for input ranked faster collateral mobility as the top benefit while rarely citing 24/7 trading or atomic settlement, but respondents pushed back hard on the regulators' suggestion that settlement finality could be set contractually rather than in legislation, arguing that without statutory finality assets cannot safely be re-pledged, lent or used as margin. The Bank confirmed stablecoins can be settlement assets in the Digital Securities Sandbox and said it will consider tokenised assets as collateral in its Sterling Monetary Framework, with a supervisory statement on CCP acceptance of tokenised collateral due later this year.
What this means
Collateral & funding desk
the prize respondents named is faster collateral mobility, and that hinges entirely on legal settlement finality, so hold any re-pledging or margin build until the statutory position clarifies rather than relying on a contractual construction. The forthcoming CCP supervisory statement is the document to read before assuming tokenised collateral is CCP-eligible.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the Bank's willingness to weigh tokenised assets as Sterling Monetary Framework collateral is a meaningful signal, so track the finality response since the noncommittal position on further certainty is the open variable that gates the whole collateral case.
FCA weighs exempting tokenised gold from fund rules to defend the London market ↗
UK
The FCA is considering exempting tokenised gold from collective-investment-scheme fund rules, framed as protecting London's competitiveness as tokenised commodities develop, alongside its call for input on tokenised gold including collateral use. The move signals the regulator wants tokenised bullion to sit outside the fund-authorisation perimeter that would otherwise slow issuance.
What this means
Product ownertokenised commodity
exemption from fund rules removes a structural drag on tokenised-gold issuance in London, so revisit whether a UK venue now competes with jurisdictions already offering lighter treatment. The collateral-use consultation ties this to the wider UK collateral roadmap worth tracking together.

Infrastructure & custody

Circle launches Arc blockchain with 100-plus institutions and BlackRock, DTCC and ICE as validators ↗
US
Circle launched Arc, a public but permissioned blockchain it describes as an economic operating system for payments, tokenised markets, lending and trading, with more than 100 institutions live or exploring, USDC as the gas token, sub-second settlement and founding validators including BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, Standard Chartered and Visa. At launch Arc supports BlackRock and Janus Henderson tokenised funds alongside Circle's own USYC, ships the StableFX foreign-exchange protocol and Uniswap and Morpho integrations, and includes infrastructure for AI agents to transact autonomously in USDC, with CEO Jeremy Allaire calling it more consequential than USDC itself.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
a validator set spanning BlackRock, DTCC, ICE and the card networks is a materially different institutional footprint from a crypto-native chain, so assess whether building or settling on Arc reduces the counterparty and reconciliation overhead of a bespoke stack. USDC-denominated gas removes the volatile-token problem that has kept treasury teams off public chains, which is the specific friction to re-evaluate.
Product ownertokenised fund
BlackRock and Janus Henderson funds live on Arc at launch means a competing distribution surface with card-network and depository reach, so weigh whether listing a fund there widens access relative to the current single-issuer platforms. The StableFX layer adds an onchain FX leg that changes subscription economics for cross-currency flows.
Compliance, legal & risk
the built-in AI-agent transaction infrastructure puts autonomous USDC payments on a chain with G-SIB validators, so get ahead of the authorisation and liability questions before an agent moves client value, since the framework arrives before the rulebook does.
Founder & strategy
Arc pushes Circle from stablecoin issuer into vertically integrated infrastructure competing with Stripe's Tempo and the bank stablecoin consortium, so re-read where your own product sits in a stack Circle now spans end to end. The 2027 proof-of-stake consideration and ARC token are the governance variables to watch.
S&P Global acquires smart-contract security leader OpenZeppelin ↗
Global
S&P Global agreed to buy OpenZeppelin, whose open-source contract library has supported more than $37 trillion in cumulative transfers as of the September 2026 announcement and whose audit practice has completed over 900 security engagements, though terms were undisclosed and S&P said the deal is not material to results. The purchase moves S&P from rating the credit and structure of stablecoins, tokenised bonds and MMFs into owning the firm many issuers rely on to check the code itself, and OpenZeppelin will keep its name as a separate unit under co-founder Demian Brener.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
the firm your team relies on for open-source contract primitives and audits now sits inside a ratings house, so consider whether that concentrates the technology-risk assessment layer and what it means for vendor independence in your security review. The builder, auditor and open-source provider under one owner is the consolidation to weigh.
Compliance, legal & risk
S&P building common ways to assess smart-contract technology risk points toward a benchmark that institutions may expect before using onchain products at scale, so factor an emerging code-risk standard into how you document diligence on tokenised instruments.
Deutsche Bank plans institutional digital-asset custody this year under MiCA ↗
EU
Deutsche Bank will offer corporate, institutional and sovereign clients digital-asset custody and transfer services this year, using MiCA's 40-working-day notice route to BaFin, starting with Bitcoin, Ether and the stablecoins USDC, EURC and EURAU. EURAU is issued by AllUnity, in which the bank's asset manager DWS is a joint-venture partner, so a vertical-integration element runs through the launch.
What this means
Treasury & allocator
a G-SIB custodian offering digital-asset custody under MiCA removes the separate-crypto-custodian objection for EU institutional mandates, so check whether the approved-custodian list already accommodates the assets Deutsche Bank plans to support. EURAU support inside the same relationship links custody and the DWS-backed stablecoin, worth assessing together.
Regulatory & policy affairs
the 40-day BaFin notice route shows how fast a licensed EU bank can stand up crypto services under MiCA, a timeline worth benchmarking against the slower US statutory path for equivalent permissions.
S&P Global leads Kaiko funding extension to $110 million ↗
EU
S&P Global led a Series B extension taking Kaiko's round to $110 million as of the September 2026 announcement, with BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Nasdaq Ventures, RBC, Coinbase Ventures and the Stellar network among backers, and investors joining a Kaiko-chaired working group shaping data infrastructure for tokenised markets. The financing pairs with the OpenZeppelin acquisition to show S&P assembling both the code-risk and market-data layers for tokenised assets.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
institutional-grade, around-the-clock market data is a prerequisite for tokenised Treasuries, MMFs, equities and bonds at scale, so weigh whether a bank-and-infrastructure-backed data standard is emerging that your pricing and valuation stack should align to.

Agentic & frontier

Payward plans regulated US onchain perpetual futures on Hyperliquid ↗
US
Payward, Kraken's parent, plans to offer US clients perpetual futures on Hyperliquid's public blockchain, listed under CFTC-regulated Bitnomial Exchange with NinjaTrader Clearing carrying accounts, subject to regulatory approval and with no disclosed launch date or fees. The design keeps trade matching and recordkeeping on the public chain while wrapping the product in a regulated US structure, an attempt to bring a large offshore product onshore.
What this means
Infrastructure & platform
running a CFTC-regulated contract with matching and records on a public permissionless chain is a specific hybrid architecture, so study how the regulated clearing and DCM layer reconciles against onchain settlement if you are building anything similar. Regulatory approval is the gate, and the pattern of a designated contract market atop a public protocol is worth tracking as a template.

Worth watching next

Which Tokenized Securities Venues file first under the SEC exemption, and whether AMM-only venues force order-book exchanges like Coinbase to build separate infrastructure to participate.
Whether the HKMA‘s year-end wholesale CBDC go-live for Project EnsembleTX arrives on schedule, and which banks settle the first live tokenised-deposit transaction over it.
The Partior-LSEG DiSH Multi-Settlement Bank build reaching Q1 2027 go-live, and whether the omnibus trust-account design attracts settlement banks beyond the current four.
How the DTC tokenisation service, launching in October, feeds compliant third-party tokens into venues once the SEC exemption’s issuer-notification workflow is live, including the Prometheum-HashKey offshore distribution plan.

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Editorially independent. Not investment advice.