Hong Kong’s monetary authority said regulated stablecoins in the city are expected to be launched in the next few months, as it moves digital finance initiatives from experimentation to real-value transactions.
Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said Hong Kong’s Stablecoins Ordinance came into full effect in August last year, and that the HKMA granted stablecoin issuer licences to two entities last month.
“The two licensed issuers plan to issue HKD-referenced stablecoins for various use cases covering cross-border and local payments, tokenised asset trading and other innovative applications,” Lee said in a keynote speech at the Hong Kong Digital Finance Summit 2026.
He said the HKMA was adopting an “open yet prudent stance” on granting additional licences, but stressed that the licensing threshold would remain high given the risks inherent in stablecoin activity, the need for user protection, and considerations of market capacity and sustainable development.
Lee said digital finance was not only a technical challenge involving better ledgers, smarter contracts and more efficient tokens, but also an institutional one.
“It is about how trust gets established, maintained, and extended as the financial system takes on new forms,” he said.
The HKMA has been exploring distributed ledger technology for a decade, beginning with its first whitepaper in 2016. Its work has covered central bank digital currencies, tokenised government green bonds, stablecoins and Project Ensemble, which seeks to connect digital assets, tokenised deposits and central bank money across multiple platforms.
Lee said Project Ensemble had transitioned into a pilot stage with real value transactions, known as EnsembleTX, allowing participating banks and market players to use tokenised deposits to settle tokenised assets on a delivery-versus-payment basis.
The HKMA will also soon publish the Ensemble Use Case Report and Ensemble Taxonomy, a common set of definitions co-developed with the Ensemble Architectural Community.
Lee said the immediate next step would be to advance EnsembleTX to support settlement of tokenised deposits in CBDC, enabling continuous 24/7 settlement.
“Trust in digital finance will not come from the technology alone,” Lee said. “It will come from the soundness of the institutions that stand behind it, the clarity of the rules that govern it, and the quality of the collaboration that sustains it.”