Hong Kong: Standard Chartered-Backed Anchorpoint to Issue HKDAP Stablecoin on Solana
Anchorpoint Financial, the Hong Kong stablecoin issuer owned by Standard Chartered, HKT and Animoca Brands, plans to issue its Hong Kong dollar token HKDAP directly on the Solana blockchain. The move is aimed at taking the licensed stablecoin beyond professional investors and into everyday payments, although no launch date has been given.
Key facts
- Who: Anchorpoint is a joint venture of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), telecoms group HKT and Animoca Brands. It received one of Hong Kong’s first two stablecoin issuer licences from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in April 2026; HSBC received the other.
- What: HKDAP will be minted (created) and redeemed natively on Solana, with near-instant settlement. It is currently in a beta phase on Ethereum for institutional and professional users only.
- Why Solana: the partners say Solana hosts about US$4.9 billion of tokenised real-world assets and more than 835,000 holders of those assets.
- Partnership: the Solana Foundation joins Anchorpoint’s Tokenised Money Adoption Programme (TAP), which PwC Hong Kong joined as the first strategic partner.
- Timing: neither side has announced when HKDAP will go live on Solana.
What is HKDAP, and what changes
A stablecoin is a digital token designed to hold a steady value, usually by being backed one-for-one with a traditional currency held in reserve. HKDAP is backed by the Hong Kong dollar and issued under the city’s new Stablecoins Ordinance, which requires issuers to hold a licence from the HKMA, Hong Kong’s central bank and banking regulator.
Since August 2026 HKDAP has been distributed only to eligible institutions and professional investors, through approved partners such as the licensed exchange HashKey, with Standard Chartered as its first bank distributor. Hong Kong’s rules are strict about identity: holders must be verified, and transfers to unverified wallet addresses are restricted. Anchorpoint uses a “business-to-business-to-consumer” model, so partners handle customer onboarding, custody and conversion rather than Anchorpoint dealing with each user directly.
Native issuance on Solana means tokens would be created and redeemed on that network itself, rather than being moved across from another blockchain through a “bridge”, which adds cost and risk. Anchorpoint names retail payments, trading of tokenised real-world assets (traditional assets such as funds and bonds represented as blockchain tokens) and other high-volume uses as the targets. It plans to reach users through corporate partners, consumer apps and Solana’s network of wallets and developers.
Why it matters
Hong Kong is trying to show that a tightly regulated stablecoin market can still be useful for ordinary payments, not just for crypto trading. The two licensed issuers are now taking different routes to the public. HSBC began offering its own Hong Kong dollar token, RedCoin, through its PayMe app, which has more than 3.3 million users, in late October. Anchorpoint is betting on open blockchain networks and third-party apps instead, with chief executive Dominic Maffei describing an “open network designed to connect ecosystems, not fragment them”.
Choosing Solana, a fast and low-cost public blockchain, signals that Anchorpoint wants volume. Card-like payments need quick confirmation and tiny fees, and tokenised fund trading needs a stable cash leg to settle against. The Solana Foundation also plans a local presence in Hong Kong, and Solana has been included in Hong Kong’s OASES programme.
For the wider region, Hong Kong’s approach is being watched closely. Regulators elsewhere in Asia, including Bank Negara Malaysia, which is running ringgit stablecoin and tokenised deposit pilots ahead of a policy decision due by end-2026, are weighing how far to open their own markets to bank-backed digital money.
What to watch
- A launch date for HKDAP on Solana, and whether retail users in Hong Kong get access at the same time.
- Which consumer apps and merchants sign up as distributors, and how they handle the HKMA’s identity checks on every holder.
- How HKDAP’s open-network model performs against HSBC’s app-based RedCoin rollout.
Related on FinDeskAsia: HSBC Rolls Out RedCoin Stablecoin to 3.3 Million PayMe Users and Ringgit Stablecoin and Tokenised Deposit Pilots Near BNM’s End-2026 Policy Call.
Sources: Fintech News Hong Kong (November 2026); crypto.news (October 2026); Ledger Insights (August 2026).
