Skip to content
Wiki
Home / Institutions / HKMA (Hong Kong Monetary Authority)

HKMA (Hong Kong Monetary Authority)

Institution · Central bank

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is Hong Kong's central banking institution and the lead supervisor for the wholesale layer of the territory's tokenisation stack. HKMA owns Project Ensemble (the wholesale CBDC and tokenisation sandbox covering tokenised deposits, tokenised assets, and a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlement), the licensing perimeter for fiat-referenced stablecoin issuers under the Stablecoins Ordinance which commenced 1 August 2025, and the bank-money plumbing for tokenised deposits across the licensed bank population. The November 2025 launch of the EnsembleTX phase moved Project Ensemble from sandbox to real-value transactions, and the 10 April 2026 first stablecoin licence awards to HSBC and Anchorpoint took the Ordinance perimeter from theoretical to operational. For a tokenisation operator, HKMA is the counterparty for stablecoin licensing, for participation in Project Ensemble, and for any wholesale settlement infrastructure question. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC HK) owns the investor-facing layer in parallel.

Role in tokenisation

  • Wholesale infrastructure operator via Project Ensemble. Tokenised deposits, tokenised assets, and a wCBDC for interbank settlement, organised as a tiered ledger sandbox launched March 2024 with 7 licensed banks, running Phase I, atomic DvP (delivery-versus-payment), and Phase II, tokenised MMF (money-market fund) redemption, through 2024-2025. The live-value pilot phase, EnsembleTX, opened 13 November 2025 with 7 licensed settlement banks and 13 industry participants settling tokenised deposits via HKD RTGS pending tokenised central-bank-money enablement; the first live transaction, HSBC moving HKD 3.8 million for Ant International, executed the same day (HKMA press release). This is the first APAC framework of its kind to move from closed sandbox to a live-value pilot for a regulated investment-product use case.
  • Stablecoin licensing authority under the HK Stablecoins Ordinance. Licensed issuers must hold high-quality liquid asset reserves at least equal to par, segregated, with a redemption right at par.
  • Operator of the HKSAR institutional government bond programme (HKD and offshore RMB tenors), which is the conventional instrument that any tokenised-bond pilot in HK will benchmark against.

Recent activity

  • 22-27 Apr 2026. Tender results published for 3-year, 7-year and 15-year HKD HKSAR institutional government bonds and 3-year and 10-year RMB HKSAR institutional government bonds. Routine programme.
  • 22-27 Apr 2026. Multiple "scam alert related to banks" notices and a phishing alert relating to Alipay Financial Services (HK). Routine consumer-protection issuance.
  • 10 Apr 2026First Stablecoins Ordinance issuer licences awarded to HSBC (The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited) and Anchorpoint Financial (a Standard Chartered HK + HKT + Animoca JV) (HSBC HK statement). Drawn from a queue reported at 36 applications. HSBC plans an HKD-denominated stablecoin launch in H2 2026 integrated into PayMe and the HSBC HK App. See HK Stablecoins Ordinance for the licensing perimeter.
  • 13 Nov 2025Project Ensemble next-phase launch as EnsembleTX, the move from sandbox to real-value tokenised-deposit transactions (HKMA press release). Initial use case is tokenised MMF transactions settled with tokenised deposits, with HKD RTGS as the interbank settlement leg pending progressive upgrade to tokenised central-bank money on a 24/7 basis. Named bank participants include Standard Chartered, HSBC, Bank of China (Hong Kong); named asset managers include BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. See HKMA EnsembleTX for the full read.

Open questions

  • The full EnsembleTX participant roster (Annexes A and B of the 13 Nov 2025 HKMA press release) is in PDF annexes. The named anchor banks and asset managers are well-corroborated, but the consolidated industry-pioneer roster has not been re-stated in summary form.
  • The timeline for upgrading the EnsembleTX interbank cash leg from HKD RTGS to tokenised central-bank money has not been published as a calendar commitment.
  • Whether second-wave Stablecoins Ordinance licence awards in 2026 include additional bank-led applicants (Bank of China HK, ICBC HK), payment-firm-led applicants, or technology-firm-led applicants from the broader 36-applicant queue.
  • The relationship between HKMA's wCBDC layer and the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre's ongoing work has not been re-stated post mBridge graduation.