Hong Kong's first regulated stablecoin, Standard Chartered's HKDAP, enters beta

Standard Chartered’s Anchorpoint has started beta issuance of HKDAP, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, through licensed exchanges HashKey and OSL. Ledger Insights first reported the move and described it as the first issuance of a Hong Kong regulated stablecoin. The beta follows the HKMA’s April grant of the first two stablecoin issuer licenses, to Anchorpoint and HSBC.

The token’s name, HKD At Par, states the promise: a Hong Kong dollar token at par. Anchorpoint, a Standard Chartered subsidiary, issues it through a B2B2C model — its distributors own the relationship with end users. Initial target use cases are cross-border payments and tokenized securities settlement.

The governing rule is the HKMA’s requirement that all stablecoin holders be identified, unless an issuer demonstrates that alternative risk-mitigating measures work. Ledger Insights calls this a higher compliance bar than most jurisdictions impose, and the requirement puts Hong Kong on the stricter end of global stablecoin rules. During beta, the bar is low: access is limited to institutions, corporate users and professional investors, who already go through standard onboarding.

Retail access could come by year’s end, the report says, but only if Anchorpoint can show the regulator a workable alternative to identifying every holder. That is the open question. The institutional phase buys time to build that case.

Anchorpoint’s joint venture partners — web3 firm Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecom — could supply the retail channel. Animoca’s Moca Network, a digital identity solution, may help satisfy the identification rule at consumer scale. The B2B2C structure puts that burden on distributors, not on Anchorpoint directly.

The target use cases explain the design. Cross-border payments and tokenized securities settlement both need a cash leg that is programmable and trustworthy. A regulated stablecoin from a bank-owned subsidiary gives onchain markets that settlement asset without crypto-native credit risk.

The beta is the first live test of Hong Kong’s model. If the regime works, the combination of a bank issuer, licensed exchanges and a strict identification rule becomes a template for other incumbents. If retail breaks it, the rule changes. The outcome matters well beyond Hong Kong.