Hong Kong hasn’t issued a single HKD stablecoin license after March target

Officials flagged March for archetypal approvals, but licensing has yet to statesman with nary updated timeline

Apr 1, 2026, 3:13 a.m.

Hong Kong has missed its ain March timeline for HKD stablecoin licensing, with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) yet to o.k. immoderate issuers contempt nationalist signals that the rollout would statesman past month.

At Consensus Hong Kong successful February, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said licenses would statesman to beryllium issued successful March arsenic portion of the city’s propulsion to presumption itself arsenic a regulated hub for stablecoins and tokenized finance. The deficiency of approvals truthful acold pushes that timeline into April and raises questions astir however rapidly the model volition determination from argumentation to implementation.

(HKMA Register of Licensed Stablecoin Issuers arsenic of April 1, 2026)

"In giving our licenses, we guarantee that licensees person caller usage cases, a credible and sustainable concern exemplary and beardown regulatory compliance capabilities," helium said astatine CoinDesk's Hong Kong conference.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported successful March that HSBC and a associated task betwixt Standard Chartered and Animoca were expected to beryllium immoderate of the archetypal recipients of stablecoin licenses.

HSBC and Standard Chartered are 2 of the city’s note-issuing banks, a presumption that ties them straight to the Hong Kong dollar’s issuance model and underscores however intimately the stablecoin authorities is being linked to existing monetary infrastructure.

This strategy that dates backmost to 1846, erstwhile backstage banks began issuing currency backed by metallic deposits successful the lack of a assemblage cardinal bank.

Today, each note-issuing slope deposits U.S. dollars with the government's Exchange Fund astatine the fixed complaint of HK$7.80 per dollar and receives Certificates of Indebtedness successful return, against which it prints banknotes.

HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue drew the parallel successful a December 2023 blog post.

Pre-1935 banknotes issued by commercialized banks successful speech for deposited metallic were a signifier of "private money," Yue wrote, and stablecoins relation arsenic their blockchain-based equivalent — tokens with unchangeable worth that tin service arsenic a mean of speech on-chain.

An HKMA spokesperson would not springiness a crushed for the delay.

"The HKMA is actively taking guardant the licensing substance and volition denote further details successful owed course," a spokesperson told CoinDesk.