Hong Kong’s first licensed Hong Kong dollar stablecoin has entered an institutional-only distribution phase, underscoring how the city’s new regime is moving from licensing into controlled market deployment rather than an immediate retail rollout.
Anchorpoint Financial Technology began the first stage of issuing HKDAP on Aug. 12, four months after Hong Kong approved the territory’s first two Hong Kong dollar stablecoin licenses. Anchorpoint’s initial distribution is limited to institutional distributors and professional clients. Retail availability could follow as early as the end of 2026, subject to market conditions.
The company is a joint venture involving Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), telecommunications group HKT and metaverse-focused firm Animoca Brands. Its launch gives Hong Kong its first live test of whether a locally regulated stablecoin can build practical payment and settlement use cases beyond cryptocurrency trading.
Hong Kong issued licenses to Anchorpoint and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation on April 10, 2026. The pace since then has been measured, despite 36 institutions submitting applications in September 2025. The limited number of approvals and the institutional-first launch suggest issuers and regulators are prioritizing reserve management, compliance controls, custody arrangements and distribution channels before encouraging broad consumer use.
Distribution remains a central challenge
A stablecoin license alone does not create a payment network. HKDAP will need regulated firms that can distribute the token, provide custody, onboard clients and connect it with existing payment and virtual-asset infrastructure.
The report states that Hong Kong dollar stablecoin distribution and custody would rely partly on the city’s 13 licensed virtual-asset trading platform operators, alongside other regulated intermediaries. At least three of those firms had been testing arrangements with Anchorpoint, although some later scaled back their involvement.
That constraint could shape HKDAP’s early adoption. Institutional users may have clearer reasons to use a Hong Kong dollar token for on-chain settlement, treasury transfers or tokenized-asset transactions. Retail users, by contrast, will need straightforward access, reliable redemption and a reason to choose the token over bank deposits, stored-value wallets or conventional payment applications.
Hong Kong’s regime also places established financial institutions at the center of the first launches. Standard Chartered expanded its digital-asset activity separately in July through a collaboration with Circle, announcing a one-stop institutional access service for USDC. The arrangement gives the bank a role in the market’s dominant dollar-based stablecoin while Anchorpoint works on a Hong Kong dollar alternative.
The second license holder, HSBC, has scheduled its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin work for the second half of 2026, according to the report. Its eventual launch would introduce direct competition between two bank-linked issuers in a market where users may judge stablecoins less by blockchain features than by redemption access, payment acceptance and the reputation of the institutions standing behind them.
Banks have commercial incentives to protect payment relationships
Stablecoins present an awkward strategic question for banks. They can create new settlement tools and help banks serve tokenized markets, but a widely used stablecoin could also shift client balances away from traditional deposits.
Figures in the report show that HSBC derives about 85% of its payments revenue from net interest income generated through deposits. Payments accounted for roughly 22% of the bank’s total 2025 revenue under the same calculation. A bank-issued stablecoin that circulates widely would therefore need to complement deposit-based economics rather than simply replace them.
This helps explain why early bank-led launches are likely to focus on clients with defined transaction needs. Cross-border corporate payments, institutional settlement and tokenized securities may offer more immediate use cases than everyday retail spending. Such services could allow banks to retain the customer relationship, provide custody and foreign-exchange services, and manage the conversion between deposits and on-chain money.
Dollar dominance leaves little room for local-currency tokens
The challenge facing Hong Kong dollar stablecoins extends beyond domestic distribution. U.S. dollar-pegged products remain overwhelmingly dominant in the global stablecoin market.
The report puts the global stablecoin market at about $308.3 billion, with dollar-denominated stablecoins accounting for 98% of the total. That concentration means local-currency issuers are competing against tokens with deep liquidity, broad exchange support and established use in crypto markets.
The euro offers a useful comparison. SWIFT’s June 2026 data placed the euro at 21.88% of global payments, second only to the U.S. dollar, while the currency represented about 20% of global foreign-exchange reserves. Yet euro stablecoins had a combined market value of about $674 million, or 0.3% of the global stablecoin market, according to the report.
Circle’s EURC accounted for approximately $430 million of that euro total, equivalent to 64% of the segment. European banks are trying to change that balance: a banking-group project preparing a Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation-compliant euro stablecoin for the second half of 2026 has expanded to 37 financial institutions across 15 countries. Its members include BNP Paribas, ING, UniCredit, BBVA and ABN AMRO.
The euro’s small on-chain footprint despite its established role in international finance suggests that stablecoin growth depends on more than the size of the underlying currency. Liquidity, merchant acceptance, integration with trading venues and accessible payment applications determine whether a token becomes useful outside specialist markets.
Asian banks are pursuing parallel experiments
Japan and South Korea are also developing local-currency digital-money projects, though through different institutional structures. SBI Holdings launched JPYSC, described in the report as Japan’s first trust-bank-backed yen stablecoin on Ethereum, in June 2026.
Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui and Mizuho have separately announced joint work on a yen stablecoin, with commercial transactions targeted during Japan’s fiscal 2026. The involvement of Japan’s largest banking groups could give a yen token substantial corporate reach if it is integrated into existing settlement and business-payment channels.
In South Korea, nine card issuers have completed stablecoin pilots, while Bank of Busan tested a stablecoin project on Kaia Chain. The bank reported a 100% transaction success rate and processing times below one second in that trial. The report also records 18 consecutive months of net stablecoin outflows from South Korea totaling more than $1 billion, indicating that local experimentation is occurring alongside substantial demand for offshore digital-dollar products.
Hong Kong’s HKDAP launch therefore enters a regional race defined less by token creation than by who can build credible payment networks around regulated digital cash. Its institutional rollout gives Anchorpoint time to establish those links before retail access, but it also means adoption will be judged by actual use in settlement and payments rather than by the license approval alone.
Want deeper context on Asia’s digital cash shift? Explore why global stablecoins matter for Hong Kong’s licensed HKDAP rollout.
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