Standard Chartered CEO Sees Hong Kong Stablecoin as Pivotal For International Trade Settlement

At FinTech Week, the Standard Chartered CEO said Hong Kong’s integer plus pilots, including HKD-backed stablecoins and tokenized deposits, could alteration cross-border trade, arsenic regulators unveiled caller rules allowing shared bid books for crypto exchanges.

Nov 3, 2025, 10:46 a.m.

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said connected Monday that Hong Kong's propulsion into tokenized wealth and stablecoins could laic the instauration for a caller epoch of integer commercialized settlement.

Speaking astatine Hong Kong FinTech Week, Winters pointed to ongoing pilots successful tokenized deposits and the instauration of a Hong Kong-dollar-backed stablecoin arsenic imaginable breakthroughs for cross-border commerce.

“I wouldn’t accidental that we’ve afloat captured the digitized quality of those flows arsenic yet, but we will,” Winters said. “Having innovations similar the tokenization of deposits being led successful Hong Kong, the constitution of Hong Kong dollar unchangeable coins … becomes a truly absorbing currency of exchange, oregon mean of speech for planetary trade.”

He added that Hong Kong’s “pilots successful integer assets … arsenic mechanisms for commercialized globally … volition creaseless the improvement into the caller planetary trading bid connected wholly integer terms.”

His remarks come astir a year aft Standard Chartered’s Hong Kong unit, Animoca Brands and HKT announced a associated task to use for a licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to contented an HKD-backed stablecoin nether the city’s caller regulatory regime. The trio is among the 5 entities participating successful the HKMA’s stablecoin issuer sandbox launched past year.

Earlier today, during the Hong Kong Fintech Week, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the city's markets regulator, announced that it would let locally-licensed exchanges to entree planetary liquidity via shared bid books.

The change, elaborate successful a caller circular, allows Hong Kong platforms to integrate planetary liquidity pools nether what the SFC refers to arsenic its ASPIRe roadmap for integer assets.

By permitting “shared bid books,” the SFC aims to constrictive terms spreads, heighten marketplace efficiency, and amended terms discovery, though it warned of higher operational and colony risks.

Platforms indispensable support pre-funding, delivery-versus-payment settlement, unified marketplace surveillance crossed jurisdictions, and compensation reserves to support lawsuit assets, the SFC said successful its circular.

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