Hong Kong’s monetary authority says its Project Ensemble pilot has moved to a point where tokenized transactions can be settled around the clock at real value, extending activity beyond the limits of the city’s existing dollar settlement window. The change is intended to support cross-border fund transfers, tokenized investment management and treasury operations outside normal business hours.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also said it plans to bring regulated stablecoins into secondary-market trials tied to tokenized Exchange Fund Bills, marking another step in its broader effort to test how digital forms of money can work with tokenized financial assets.
Pilot moves beyond limited-hour settlement
According to the HKMA, EnsembleTX has advanced enough to support 24/7 real-value settlement for tokenized transactions. Until now, participating banks had been settling payments through Hong Kong’s existing dollar settlement system, which operates on limited hours.
That earlier arrangement meant tokenized activity still depended on conventional infrastructure for final payment. The regulator had already signaled, when the pilot started in November 2025, that it wanted to introduce tokenized central bank money to remove that constraint and enable continuous settlement.
Project Ensemble’s role in tokenized finance
Project Ensemble was launched in March 2024 to examine how banks could settle tokenized transactions using wholesale central bank digital money. A sandbox followed in August 2024, linking tokenized deposit platforms and allowing trial transactions to take place.
The HKMA said tokenized central bank money is expected to act as a foundation layer for 24/7 settlement. It added that tokenized bonds, money market funds and bank deposits are already being used within the initiative, showing that the pilot is testing multiple asset types rather than a single product category.
Stablecoins set for inclusion in debt-market tests
The regulator also reported that recognized dealers had completed secondary-market trial trades in tokenized Exchange Fund Bills. Those trades are now set to be broadened, with the HKMA planning to include regulated stablecoins in the next phase of testing.
That would bring privately issued, regulated digital tokens into a market exercise that has so far focused on tokenized government debt instruments. The announcement did not provide a launch date for the expanded trials, but it confirmed the direction of the next stage.
HSBC outlines RedCoin adoption plans
Separately, HSBC said its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin RedCoin has reached 50,000 users. The token launched on Oct. 23 for transfers and merchant payments through PayMe, and the bank said more than 3.3 million PayMe customers are able to activate stablecoin wallets.
HSBC said it wants to grow RedCoin to a multi-million-user product as access expands. The bank also plans to add the stablecoin to its mobile banking app and eventually use it for subscriptions into tokenized investments, including a Hong Kong dollar money market fund share class.
What comes next
The next confirmed step is the expansion of tokenized Exchange Fund Bill trials to include regulated stablecoins. More broadly, the HKMA’s latest update suggests its immediate focus is on making tokenized settlement continuously available, with tokenized central bank money positioned as the base infrastructure for that model.
Taken together, the developments show Hong Kong pushing its tokenization work from sandbox experimentation toward more practical settlement and market-use cases, while still framing the effort as a series of pilots and trials rather than a fully deployed system.
Source: cointelegraph.com