Hong Kong: HKMA and SFC Want 24/7 Tokenised Deposits to Settle Tokenised Fund Trades
Hong Kong’s two main financial regulators say tokenisation is ready to move from pilots into real business. At a joint seminar on 11 November, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) set out the next goal for Project Ensemble: using round-the-clock tokenised bank deposits to pay for tokenised investment products such as money market funds.
Key facts
- The HKMA and SFC co-hosted a seminar on Project Ensemble and tokenised SFC-authorised investment products on 11 November 2026, attended by about 200 industry practitioners.
- Since 2 November, EnsembleTX, the project’s pilot, has supported 24/7 interbank settlement of tokenised deposits using tokenised central bank money.
- The pilot now has 12 participating banks and 20 “industry pioneers”, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Ant International and BlackRock.
- The SFC has approved round-the-clock secondary trading of tokenised money market funds.
- The next stage aims to grow transaction volumes by adding use cases with clear, practical benefits.
What Project Ensemble is
Project Ensemble is the HKMA’s programme to bring tokenisation into Hong Kong’s financial system. Tokenisation means recording money or assets as digital tokens on a shared ledger, so they can move and settle almost instantly and be programmed to follow rules automatically.
A tokenised deposit is ordinary bank money in token form: it stays a liability of a regulated bank, unlike a stablecoin issued by a non-bank. EnsembleTX, the live pilot that began in November 2025, lets banks make real-value payments with these tokens. It first settled through Hong Kong’s dollar real-time gross settlement system, which keeps normal operating hours. On 2 November the HKMA moved settlement onto tokenised central bank money, so banks can now settle with each other at any hour, including nights, weekends and public holidays.
From pipes to traffic
The regulators’ message this week was that the rails now exist and need users. The SFC’s Executive Director of Investment Products, Elisa Ng, said tokenisation in Hong Kong is moving “beyond experimentation towards commercialisation”, and that the next step is to generate traffic by linking tokenised investment products, digital money and market infrastructure.
The clearest early use case is investment funds. Because tokenised money market funds can now trade at any time, and tokenised deposits can settle at any time, an investor or a company treasurer could in principle move idle cash into a fund and back out again in real time, instead of waiting for banking hours. The HKMA said it will work with the SFC and the industry to widen the use of tokenised deposits to settle different kinds of tokenised investment products.
Nelson Chow, the HKMA’s Executive Director (Financial Infrastructure), described the city’s market infrastructure and growing range of digital money options as public utilities that will support the tokenisation ecosystem over time.
Why it matters
For Hong Kong, the project is part of a push to stay a leading venue for digital assets while keeping them inside the regulated banking system. Settling in central bank money reduces the risk that one bank fails to pay another during a transaction, which is a key concern for large institutions.
For the region, Hong Kong is one of several financial centres racing to build always-on settlement. Banks across Asia are testing tokenised deposits for cross-border transfers and treasury management, and the markets that can attract real volumes first are likely to shape the standards others follow. The big open question is demand: the infrastructure is in place, but regulators now need banks, fund houses and corporate clients to use it at scale.
What to watch
- Which banks and fund managers launch commercial products that pay for tokenised funds with tokenised deposits.
- Whether EnsembleTX volumes grow beyond pilot level, and whether the HKMA publishes usage figures.
- Links between Ensemble and tokenisation projects in other markets, which would open cross-border use cases.
Related on FinDeskAsia: South Korea: Suhyup Bank tests overseas transfers with tokenised deposits on Partior · How Malaysia’s payment system works
Sources: Hong Kong Monetary Authority, seminar press release (November 2026); Hong Kong Monetary Authority, EnsembleTX 24/7 settlement (November 2026); Fintech News Hong Kong (November 2026)
