Hong Kong's first regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin went live on 12 Aug, restricted to institutions and available through only two exchanges. It is the first working product from a licensing regime that attracted 36 applications, granted two licences and has issued none since.
Standard Chartered's Anchorpoint Debuts Hong Kong's First Stablecoin
13 August 2026 - 08:31 UTC
Anchorpoint Financial, the joint venture formed in February 2025 by Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong, Hong Kong Telecommunications and Animoca Brands, began a limited rollout of HKDAP (HKD At Par). The token is designed to hold a fixed value against the Hong Kong dollar and is backed one-to-one by reserves held in segregated accounts, the company said in a 12 Aug statement.
Hong Kong has been working towards this moment for four and a half years. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) published its first discussion paper on stablecoins on 12 Jan 2022 and said it aimed to have a regime running by 2023 or 2024. It missed by roughly two years. Consultation conclusions came in January 2023, a legislative proposal in December 2023, an issuer sandbox in March 2024, and the Stablecoins Ordinance only took effect on 1 Aug 2025. Licences followed on 10 Apr 2026, a live product 16 months after the law and four years and seven months after the first paper.
The wait bought the two winners a narrow but valuable position. Issuers earn on the reserves backing the tokens and sit at the centre of any Hong Kong dollar settlement that moves onchain, which Anchorpoint says it will target first in cross-border payments and the settlement of tokenized real-world assets. The distributors take the conversion and redemption flow. What neither gets, for now, is retail, and what none of the other 34 applicants got is a licence at all.
Scarcity is the policy, not a backlog
The HKMA approved Anchorpoint and HSBC on 10 Apr and has approved no one else. Officials including HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue and Deputy Chief Executive Darryl Chan have said repeatedly that only a handful of licences would be granted at the outset.
Both licence holders are note-issuing banks. HSBC and Standard Chartered already print part of Hong Kong's physical currency; the third is Bank of China (Hong Kong). A regime open to 36 applicants has so far left regulated stablecoin issuance controlled by the same banks that issue the banknotes.
The HKMA told Sandmark on 10 Aug that it remains "open but prudent" on further licences and wants to see how the first two operate before approving more.
The distributors control the access
Anchorpoint is not selling directly to users. Authorized distributors, including OSL Group and HashKey, convert between HKDAP and fiat for institutions, corporate clients and professional investors. The token runs on a public blockchain that Anchorpoint did not name.
That structure matters for anyone assessing where the revenue sits. The issuer holds the licence and the reserves. The exchanges own the client relationship.
OSL shares closed at HK$12.99 on 12 Aug, up 5.1% on the previous session and at the day's high after trading as low as HK$12.14. The move was more than double the stock's median daily range over the past year. The gains did not hold. Shares closed at HK$12.53 on 13 Aug, down 3.5%, leaving them 1.4% above Monday's close and well short of the HK$20.18 reached in the past 12 months (prices from TradingView).
"Our immediate focus is on supporting the development of commercial applications that demonstrate the value of regulated tokenized money in real-world settings, including payments and settlement use cases," Anchorpoint CEO and co-founder Dominic Maffei said.
Higher capital bar than Singapore
Hong Kong requires issuers to hold minimum paid-up capital of HK$25mn (about $3.2mn) and full reserve backing in high-quality liquid assets, segregated from operating funds. The Monetary Authority of Singapore requires S$1mn (about $781k) or half of annual operating expenses, whichever is greater, roughly a quarter of the Hong Kong threshold at the floor.
There is a further wrinkle for anyone modelling HKDAP as a settlement asset. The Hong Kong dollar has itself been pegged to the US dollar since 1983 under the Linked Exchange Rate System, at around HK$7.8. A holder of HKDAP is holding a token that references a currency that references another currency.
HSBC still to come, retail later
HSBC has said it will issue its own Hong Kong dollar stablecoin in the second half of 2026 and integrate it into retail channels, including PayMe and its mobile banking app. An HSBC spokesperson told Sandmark that the timeline is unchanged, adding: "Preparations are currently progressing as planned."
Anchorpoint said retail access could come "as early as end-2026 depending on market conditions." Until then, the first product out of Asia's most restrictive stablecoin regime is available to professional investors, through two exchanges, 16 months after the city's Stablecoins Ordinance took effect on 1 Aug 2025.
