Hong Kong’s monetary authority said it will develop a Digital Asset Platform later this year to support the issuance and settlement of digital bonds and, in the future, other digital assets.
The move comes as the city looks to deepen its role as a “super connector” for cross-border payments and financial market infrastructure.
Eddie Yue, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said Hong Kong has long been a place where people meet, ideas are exchanged, and deals are done, with building connections and fostering innovation forming two important dimensions of the city’s function as a business hub.
“Hong Kong is branded as a ‘super connector,’ and this is quite real,” Yue said in opening remarks at the 2026 Global PMI Summit.
He said Hong Kong’s fundamental role has remained the same: intermediating trade, investment and financial flows between the Chinese Mainland and the rest of the world.
The city has introduced various Connect Schemes since 2014, including Stock Connect, Bond Connect, Swap Connect, and Wealth Management Connect, to deepen financial integration and facilitate cross-boundary capital flows.
Yue said Hong Kong’s multi-currency Real Time Gross Settlement systems have domestic and overseas linkages, while the Central Moneymarkets Unit, the central securities depository for debt securities in Hong Kong, has developed links with regional and international CSDs such as Euroclear and Clearstream.
Looking ahead, the CMU will be further internationalized and modernized, with its platform to be upgraded and a Digital Asset Platform developed later this year.
On retail payments, Yue said Hong Kong had established a linkage between its Faster Payment System and Thailand’s PromptPay in 2023 for cross-border QR merchant payments.
This was followed by the launch of Payment Connect last June, linking FPS with the Chinese Mainland’s Internet Banking Payment System.
Yue said the HKMA will continue to review domestic initiatives and support international efforts to move towards the G20 targets of making cross-border payments faster, cheaper, more transparent and more accessible.
The HKMA last November unveiled “Fintech 2030”, which aims to make Hong Kong a robust, resilient and future-ready fintech hub. The strategy spans over 40 initiatives across four pillars: Data and Payment, AI, Resilience, and Tokenisation.
Yue highlighted tokenisation as having clear benefits for wholesale and cross-border transactions, saying the technology can drive greater efficiency, lower costs and improve transparency.
The HKMA launched Project Ensemble two years ago to support the development of a tokenisation ecosystem.
Last November, it entered a pilot phase, EnsembleTX, empowering market participants to engage in real-value transactions involving tokenised deposits and digital assets.
Yue said the HKMA will continue to deepen and scale up the tokenisation ecosystem by onboarding more banks, incubating new use cases and driving broader adoption.
He also said Swift is building a blockchain-based shared ledger that will enable interoperability between banks’ tokenised deposits and facilitate cross-border payments on a 24/7 basis.
“Such effort will reduce fragmentation in the emerging tokenised economy, which is crucial to maintaining an efficient multi-currency cross-border payment environment,” Yue said.
Yue said financial innovation was exciting, but venturing into unfamiliar spaces can bring risks that may undermine the stability and credibility of the financial system.
He cited the implementation of Hong Kong’s stablecoin issuer regime as a case in point, saying it adheres to the principle of “same activity, same risks, same regulation” and aligns with international regulatory standards.