Author:Wu Shuo Blockchain

On April 10, 2026, Hong Kong's stablecoin supervision entered the "operational" stage: the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced that it would grant a stablecoin issuer license to Anchorpoint, a joint venture established by HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Anchorage Group and Hong Kong Telecommunications, in accordance with the Stablecoin Ordinance. The license will take effect today, and said that the two institutions will start business in the next few months after completing the necessary preparations. Affected by the news, related Hong Kong stocks rose, with Guotai Junan International rising as much as 27.69%, and Yunfeng Financial (stable currency concept stock) rising as much as 8.74%.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority subsequently updated the "Record of Licensed Stablecoin Issuers" to disclose the basic information of the two licensees:

Possible trends in the next round of licenses

Who will be issued in the next round is the question that the market is most concerned about, but in terms of supervision, it is closer to "no timetable and no naming". The complete list of "36 applicants" in Hong Kong and the reasons for their respective rejections have not been made public. We can only deduce "why these two" are from the HKMA's description of the screening criteria.

Information from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's technical briefing reported by Radio Television Hong Kong shows that Yu Weiman said that whether to issue additional licenses in the future will be "open and cautious". There is no clear trend at this stage; even if it is issued again in the future, the overall number of licenses will be very limited.

Chan Weimin, Vice President of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, further explained: The licensing decision is the result of a comprehensive comparison of various application conditions, and it "happens" that both institutions have banking backgrounds. According to reports from industry media, Chen Weimin also emphasized that there is currently no "timetable for additional license issuance." The time for additional issuance will depend on factors such as implementation results, market acceptance, and international trends, and the list of potential applicants will not be disclosed.

The most worthy of observation in the next round are still the other participants in the HKMA’s stablecoin issuer sandbox. In July 2024, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced the first batch of sandbox lists, including JD Coin Chain Technology (Hong Kong), Yuanbi Innovation Technology, etc.

But the Hong Kong Monetary Authority also made it very clear at the time: the sandbox was just a "small-scale trial run" mechanism, which was designed to allow institutions to test processes and regulatory run-in rules under the premise of controllable risks; participants were not allowed to touch public funds in the early stage, nor were they allowed to sell products to the public or solicit funds. In other words, entering the sandbox is more like going to the exam room to do simulation questions first. It does not mean that you have obtained a license, nor does it mean that you can officially issue coins.

In addition to sandbox organizations, some large companies have also publicly expressed their stance. For example, the media has reported that after the passage of the Stablecoin Bill in 2025, Ant International stated that it would deliver packages as soon as possible after the application channel is opened, and hopes to use stablecoins for real business scenarios such as cross-border payments and fund management.

But there is obviously still a long way to go from "expressing intention" to "actually getting the license". This also cooled down the market's optimistic expectations. The outside world originally expected that this would be the starting point for Crypto to become compliant and mainstream in Hong Kong; but currently, it is still only innovative and difficult to break the inherent situation.

Those who really get the tickets first are still mainly institutions with the deepest traditional financial background and the most regulatory trust. On the surface, Hong Kong has opened the door to Web3; but in the most critical right to issue currency, the initiative is still firmly in the hands of traditional finance. To put it more bluntly, Hong Kong welcomes innovation, but this time it does not intend to truly hand over the key to stablecoins to native Crypto projects and major technology companies.

Standard Chartered Bank HKDAP issuance roadmap

The shareholder structure of Qingdian itself shows that it is not an ordinary stable currency company. Behind it stand Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited, Hong Kong Telecom and Animoca Brands, which respectively correspond to the three capabilities of bank compliance, payment channels and Web3 ecosystem. This is equivalent to a stablecoin that has been connected to the "bank safe", "payment entrance" and "on-chain application network" from the very beginning - it has both the license, risk control and governance capabilities that are most valued by the traditional financial system, and also has the most scarce user access and application landing scenarios for Web3 projects. From the beginning, the business structure was set up based on "who is responsible for compliance, who is responsible for traffic, and who is responsible for implementation."

Therefore, Standard Chartered Bank, as one of the note-issuing banks in Hong Kong, has laid a solid foundation for compliance, provided guarantees for the full link of the reserve assets/custody/trust/assurance audit/redemption process, and completed the screening, access and connection of the authorized distribution system; this is directly related to the minimum standards of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on the hard requirements for reserve segregation, custody arrangements, trust structures and 1 working day redemption.

What is more noteworthy is that Dingdian does not position stablecoins as pure trading tools, but clearly targets two scenarios with more realistic needs: one is the settlement and distribution of tokenized real-world assets (RWA), and the other is cross-border capital and payment flows. The former can be understood as that if bonds, funds or other real assets are moved to the chain in the future, HKDAP hopes to become the "currency responsible for clearing and delivery"

The latter is closer to the purpose that ordinary people can understand - making cross-border transfers, settlements and payments no longer need to be transferred through layers and take a long time like traditional bank remittances. In other words, what Dingdian wants to do is not to add another “tradable Hong Kong dollar token”, but to strive to become a basic payment tool in the financial system on Hong Kong’s regulated chain.

Other perspectives

Under the current system, there are currently three note-issuing banks in Hong Kong, namely HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited. Juxtaposing the "history of banknote issuance" and "stablecoin licensing", you will find that the first batch of licenses indeed fall on the two strongest credit endorsement lines: HSBC itself is one of the banknote-issuing banks; Dingdian is established and controlled by Standard Chartered (also one of the banknote-issuing banks).

Under this structure, Hong Kong has not chosen the path of "crypto-native institutions running first and regulating later", but has incorporated stablecoins as part of the upgrade of traditional financial infrastructure: "screening first and then expanding" through high thresholds, and transforming stablecoins from "technical products" into "auditable payment and settlement tools" through clear reserve, custody, trust and redemption requirements.

Lawyer Liu Honglin, founder of Kun Law Firm, believes that the market is now most concerned about "who the first batch of licenses will be issued to", but the more critical issue is actually "who will use Hong Kong's stable currency". The license is about who can issue it, but what really determines success or failure is who is willing to use it, where to use it, and whether it can create a network effect.

In the past, the market often imagined Hong Kong’s stablecoins as meeting the cross-border needs of mainland enterprises, residents’ allocation needs, and even some kind of policy buffer zone. However, as the mainland has clear regulatory qualifications for virtual currencies and stablecoins, this demand chain is not strong. Compliance in Hong Kong does not mean that products can naturally flow to the mainland market.

Then it will be the same overseas. Users will not automatically accept a stablecoin just because it has “obtained a Hong Kong license”. Stablecoin competition is more like payment network competition: who has deeper liquidity, who has access to more exchanges, wallets, merchants and protocols, who has lower usage friction, and who is more likely to become the default choice. The most difficult thing for latecomers is not to issue the coins, but to get users to change their original habits.

HSBC and Dingdian may not be head-to-head

For this reason, the first batch of institutions may not compete head-on on the same track. HSBC has made it clear that its Hong Kong dollar stable currency will be launched in the second half of 2026 and directly connected to PayMe and HSBC HK App. The initial scenario is daily payments for retail customers and merchants, including P2P, P2M, and tokenized investments within the app. PayMe has more than 3.3 million users, which means HSBC is on a ready-made on-ramp for retail payments from the get-go.

In contrast, Dingdian places more emphasis on B2B2C distribution, authorized distributors and early ecological partner incentives, and prefers to first build an institutional settlement and cross-border capital flow network. In other words, Hong Kong’s first batch of stablecoins may not necessarily compete head-on in retail payments, but may first divide the work according to channels and scenarios: one company will start from consumer wallets, and the other will start from institutional settlement and cross-border flows.

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited has made it clear that its Hong Kong dollar stable currency will be integrated into PayMe and the HSBC Hong Kong mobile banking app, and has defined initial use cases as daily transactions between retail customers and merchants (P2P, P2M, etc.) and tokenized investments within the app.

The real problem of Hong Kong dollar stable currency: why users give up their original payment habits

From the perspective of"who should use it", this means that "native users on the chain" are not the target transfer of the first batch of stablecoin products, but hope to embed stablecoins into existing public payment portals and use channels to overcome cold starts.

Therefore, if the local retail stablecoin wants to truly gain new adoption, it must answer a more realistic question: What new capabilities does it have compared to FPS, bank cards and electronic wallets. For example, whether it can make programmable payments more convenient, whether it can achieve instant settlement with on-chain assets, or whether it can significantly reduce costs in a specific merchant network. Otherwise, even if you get a license, it will be difficult to change the payment habits that users have formed.

This is why the market structure is not easy to be rewritten in the short term. According to DeFiLlama data, the current total market value of global stablecoins is approximately US$318 billion, of which USDT accounts for approximately 58% and USDC accounts for approximately 24%.

The high concentration of stablecoins means that even if a compliant Hong Kong dollar stablecoin appears in Hong Kong, it will be difficult to leverage the migration of the default entrance if "sufficiently dense access" cannot be formed in the exchange, market making, wallet, payment and clearing networks.

This is also confirmed by research by the US Federal Reserve. The Kansas City Federal Reserve's research briefing on April 10, 2026 pointed out that the uses of stablecoins can be roughly divided into four categories: trading assets, payment, transfer and idleness, of which the proportion actually used for payment may be only 0.7%, less than 1%; a larger part is still circulating in exchanges, DeFi and infrastructure. In other words, the main battlefield of today’s global stablecoins is still not “daily purchases”, but crypto finance itself.

Therefore, if the new Hong Kong dollar stable currency only enters the market as a "compliant payment instrument", it will not be easy to grow quickly. Because it is not facing a blank market, but a mature network where user habits, liquidity and channel entrances have been basically solidified.