09-23-2026 
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TL;DR: The future of digital money continues to diverge around the world, as Brazil moves to restrict digital asset settlement in cross-border eFX and Saudi Arabia steps back from a China-led blockchain alternative to SWIFT, while Hong Kong pushes ahead with 24/7 central bank digital currency (CBDC) settlement.
Key Takeaways:
- Brazil will ban regulated eFX providers from using stablecoins for foreign-counterparty settlements from October 1.
- Saudi Arabia withdrew from mBridge after its proof-of-concept phase but may continue related work.
- mBridge processed 164 real-value transactions worth over $22 million in its 2022 pilot.
- Hong Kong plans 24/7 CBDC settlement under EnsembleTX by around the end of 2026.
Table of Contents:
- Brazil tightens eFX rules on digital assets
- Saudi Arabia leaves mBridge, but keeps options open
- Hong Kong moves toward 24/7 CBDC settlement
From Latin America to East Asia, governments and central banks are adopting increasingly distinct approaches to the infrastructure that underpins digital money, with a particular focus on stablecoins and CBDCs.
In the past few weeks, Brazil has tightened the rules governing how regulated foreign-exchange providers can use stablecoins and other virtual assets, while Saudi Arabia has withdrawn from the China-led multi-CBDC mBridge project, and Hong Kong has confirmed it is moving toward round-the-clock settlement using CBDC.
Brazil eFX rules take effect
Brazil’s central bank will prohibit electronic foreign exchange (eFX) providers from using stablecoins or other virtual assets to settle payments with foreign counterparties from October 1, when Resolution BCB 561 comes into effect.
The resolution was issued on April 30 of this year by the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB)—the country’s central bank—and amends Brazil’s existing laws to provide that payments or receipts between an eFX provider and its foreign counterparty must be made through a foreign exchange (FX) transaction or through movement in a non-resident’s Brazilian-real account maintained in Brazil, with the use of digital assets prohibited for that leg of the transaction.
The rule also prohibits eFX providers and their foreign counterparties from offsetting payments owed to each other, requiring the relevant payment and receipt transactions to be settled separately, and restricts the eFX business to specified institution types authorized by the BCB—although existing providers that do not yet have authorization have until May 31, 2027, to apply.
The new measures follow the BCB’s broader implementation of Brazil’s virtual-asset framework, under Resolution BCB 521, which was issued in November 2025 and became effective as of February 2026. The Resolution brought specified virtual-asset activities, including international payments and transfers, within the foreign-exchange framework.
Crucially, the new measures do not amount to a general ban on stablecoins or individual digital asset transfers, as it specifically restricts the use of digital assets as the settlement mechanism between regulated eFX providers and their foreign counterparties, while individuals may continue to buy, hold, and transfer digital assets subject to the separate virtual-asset and foreign-exchange rules that apply to those activities.
Brazil currently permits regulated virtual-asset service providers to conduct certain international digital currency payments and transfers, but these activities are treated as foreign-exchange operations, as such providers must be authorized by the BCB, comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, transaction limits and reporting requirements, and identify owners of self-custody wallets and verify asset origins/destinations.
Brazil’s approach illustrates one side of the emerging digital-finance landscape: integrating digital asset-related activity into the existing financial system while imposing tighter limits on its use.
Meanwhile, some jurisdictions are dealing with more existential questions, such as whether new digital payment infrastructure can eventually reduce dependence on traditional cross-border networks altogether.
Saudi Arabia exits mBridge, but nothing to see here
Saudi Arabia quietly withdrew last year from the China-led, Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge (mBridge) platform, designed to enable central banks to conduct cross-border transactions directly using digital currencies—but, more broadly, aimed at reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar and the globally dominant SWIFT payment network.
The mBridge project is the result of extensive collaboration dating back to 2021 between the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), with a stated goal of tackling “some of the key inefficiencies in cross-border payments, including high costs, low speed and operational complexities.”
The Saudi Central Bank, which joined the project in 2024 and withdrew last year, has now reportedly claimed dropping out of the project was part of a planned arrangement following the completion of its proof-of-concept phase.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Financial Times on September 20 indicated that Saudi Arabia would continue to participate in related work in a lower-profile capacity, with the source reportedly adding that it would be “inaccurate to draw any wider inference” from the country’s withdrawal, as its involvement was always supposed to be limited.
This latter comment seems intended to quash potential suspicions that the move may be in deference to the United States; the latter having long been concerned that platforms such as mBridge could create a China-linked, non-dollar cross-border payment rail that would potentially reduce reliance on the U.S. financial system, weaken the dollar’s international role, and make U.S. sanctions and financial monitoring less effective.
Despite denials that the Saudi withdrawal had any broader implications, it would not be without precedent, as the FT reported in 2024 that the BIS ended its involvement in the mBridge platform in October of that year due to pressure from Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened 100% tariffs on BRICS nations pursuing dollar alternatives; as mBridge is designed to enable central banks to conduct cross-border transactions directly using digital currencies, it stands to reason that it would pose a threat to the U.S. dollar and the SWIFT system.
China’s heavy involvement in mBridge is also, no doubt, a motivating factor behind U.S. animosity. The country’s involvement dates back to February 2021, when it joined the HKMA and the Bank of Thailand’s Inthanon-LionRock CBDC experiment—itself a combination of two separate earlier projects. The new project, renamed mBridge, was also joined by the Central Bank of the UAE and BIS Innovation Hub.
In 2022, the technology moved beyond theory when 20 commercial banks conducted 164 real-value payment and FX transactions worth more than $22 million over six weeks. The platform used a purpose-built blockchain, the mBridge Ledger, developed by the central-bank participants.
Later, in June 2024, mBridge reached minimum viable product (MVP) status, adding Saudi Arabia as a full participant and opening the platform to further participation by central banks and the private sector. The BIS subsequently “graduated” from the project in October 2024, handing it over to its central bank partners, while stressing that mBridge was not created as a BRICS or sanctions-evasion system.
In 2025, the UAE and China conducted the first cross-border transaction using a CBDC on mBridge. The inaugural transaction was conducted on Jisr, a platform built to support cross-border CBDC payments and developed in collaboration with Chinese and UAE commercial banks.
Recent reports suggest that China is now preparing for the commercial rollout of the mBridge platform, backing up a November 2024 statement from the HKMA Legislative Council that said that, after reaching MVP status, mBridge would continue to be enhanced with wider public- and private-sector participation.
While mBridge’s membership and institutional structure continue to evolve, Hong Kong is pressing ahead with its own digital-finance infrastructure, with the HKMA as a key player in this endeavor.
Hong Kong plans 24/7 CBDC settlement
According to Hong Kong’s 2026 Policy Address, delivered on September 16 by Chief Executive of Hong Kong John Lee Ka-chiu, the HKMA plans to implement CBDC settlement and round-the-clock operations under its EnsembleTX pilot, while continuing to explore new uses for tokenized deposits.
EnsembleTX is the pilot phase of Hong Kong’s wholesale CBDC project, known as “Project Ensemble,” launched in 2024 to support the development of Hong Kong’s tokenization market and enable real-value transactions involving tokenized deposits and digital assets in a controlled environment.
In its 2025 annual report, published at the end of last year, the HKMA said that EnsembleTX would operate throughout 2026 and that its pilot environment would be progressively enhanced to support settlement in tokenized central bank money on a 24/7 basis.
“The launch of EnsembleTX, the pilot phase of Project Ensemble, marks a significant advance in supporting real-value transactions involving digital assets and tokenized deposits,” read the report. “More broadly, Project Ensemble has helped incubate one of the world’s largest tokenized deposit bank communities, further strengthening Hong Kong’s position as a global leader in tokenization.”
The HKMA added that “our next goal is to enable round-the-clock settlement in tokenized central bank money.”
Based on Chief Executive Lee’s address, it appears that this latter goal is getting closer to being realized.
“The HKMA is planning to implement central bank digital currency (CBDC) settlement and 24/7 operations under EnsembleTX by around the end of this year,” Lee confirmed.
Beyond this, he stated that the HKMA would “continue to explore more use cases for tokenized deposits,” while the territory’s other principal finance sector regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), would also be tasked with promoting fintech, “to empower industry upgrading.”
Specifically, Lee said the SFC would “promote the trading of regulated stablecoins on licensed virtual‑asset trading platforms and their use in the settlement of tokenised money market funds, raising Hong Kong’s competitiveness as an international digital asset hub.”
These measures are consistent with an increasing push from Hong Kong to promote itself as a digital asset hub, despite a ban on digital asset exchanges that has been in place in mainland China since 2017, accompanied by a crackdown on mining operations in 2018 and a ban on all “virtual currency” related transactions in 2021.
In contrast, Hong Kong legislators passed the ‘Stablecoin Ordinance’ in May 2025, intending to provide a supervisory and licensing regime for stablecoin providers, as well as handing enforcement powers over the sector to the HKMA. In April of this year, the regulator announced that it had granted its first stablecoin issuer licenses under the Ordinance.
More broadly, in June 2025, the Hong Kong government published its “Policy Statement 2.0 on the Development of Digital Assets in Hong Kong,” which, among other measures, introduced the “LEAP” framework that doubled down on stablecoin and asset tokenization policies and unified its regulatory framework for all virtual asset service providers. By January of this year, the government noted that it had issued licenses to 11 virtual asset trading platforms.
At the beginning of this year, the HKMA also launched a new initiative to support local banks as they introduce blockchain products, which it described as a “new supervisory arrangement” that allows local banks to “maximize the potential benefits of DLT adoption by effectively managing the associated risks.”
This was followed, in February, by Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui, revealing that the Special Administrative Region was planning to submit a draft digital assets framework “within this year.”
Taken together with Hong Kong’s expanding practical infrastructure for CBDC and tokenized-money settlement, developments in Brazil and Saudi Arabia paint a picture of a digital-finance landscape that is becoming more differentiated rather than more uniform.
And yet—beyond the fact that stablecoins, CBDC, and tokenized deposits are once again vying for prominence—a connecting thread may be that the future of digital assets looks less about replacing the existing financial system outright than about determining where, and under what rules, digital alternatives fit into it.
FAQs:
What is Brazil changing about stablecoin payments?
Brazil will stop regulated eFX providers from using stablecoins or other virtual assets to settle payments with foreign counterparties from October 1.
Does Brazil ban stablecoins?
No. The rule restricts their use only to settlements between regulated eFX providers and foreign counterparties. Individuals can still buy, hold, and transfer digital assets.
Why did Saudi Arabia leave mBridge?
Saudi Arabia said its withdrawal followed the completion of mBridge’s proof-of-concept phase. It may continue participating in related work at a lower level.
What is mBridge?
mBridge is a multi-CBDC platform designed to support cross-border payments using digital currencies and improve payment speed, cost, and efficiency.
What is Hong Kong planning for CBDCs?
Hong Kong plans to introduce CBDC settlement and 24/7 operations under its EnsembleTX pilot around the end of 2026.
What is EnsembleTX?
EnsembleTX is Hong Kong’s wholesale CBDC pilot for transactions involving tokenized deposits and digital assets.
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