Project Ensemble, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s tokenisation pilot, now lets banks settle tokenised deposit transactions with each other in tokenised central bank money around the clock, the HKMA said on November 2. Since its launch in November 2025, the pilot phase, Ensemble TX, had settled through the Hong Kong dollar real-time gross settlement system within conventional operating hours.
Five banks joined this year, including ICBC (Asia), China CITIC Bank International and Nanyang Commercial Bank, taking the total to 12 alongside HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong). Early users such as BlackRock and Ant International have used tokenised deposits for corporate treasury management and tokenised money market fund trades.
- 20 other participants, seven of them new, including HashKey Group and JD Technology
- Trial trades completed in tokenised Exchange Fund Bills between Recognised Dealers in the secondary market
- Trials to be widened soon to include regulated stablecoins
In a separate step, the Faster Payment System will link with UnionPay International by the end of 2026, letting users pay by QR code at more than 100 million merchants in Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and over 40 other markets. At the same event, HSBC group chief executive Georges Elhedery said RedCoin, its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, had drawn 50,000 users in just over a week, the South China Morning Post reported.
Why it matters: Settlement at any hour in central bank money means a company moving tokenised deposits between two Hong Kong banks on a Sunday no longer needs a stablecoin to do it. The planned stablecoin trials would then test HSBC’s and Anchorpoint’s coins, the only two licensed in Hong Kong, as a payment leg for government paper next to tokenised deposits. The HKMA gave no transaction figures for Ensemble TX, so volume is the number to watch.
Source: HKMA, November 2, 2026; HKMA FinTech Week release, November 2, 2026; RTHK, November 2, 2026; South China Morning Post, November 2, 2026
Image: Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
