08-31-2026 
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- Standard Chartered joins HKDAP push
- Stablecoin market hits new heights
- Sovereign stablecoin era takes shape
Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin gets first distributor bank, just as one of the territory’s leading payment firms reveals transaction volume on stablecoin-linked cards has surpassed $10 billion. Meanwhile, a new report heralds the birth of the “sovereign stablecoin era,” with the United Arab Emirates emerging as a regional template for replicating the success of USD stablecoins.
Standard Chartered to distribute HKD stablecoins
Last week, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited announced it had become an authorized distributor of HKDAP (HKD At Par), the first regulated Hong Kong Dollar-backed stablecoin issued by Anchorpoint Financial Limited (Anchorpoint), a licensed stablecoin issuer regulated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
As the first bank to join as an initial distributor, Standard Chartered can now support use cases and actively engage with eligible institutional clients and partners to integrate HKDAP into their business activities.
“Standard Chartered is pleased to be the first bank distributor to provide eligible clients with secure access to the market-first Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin,” said Mary Huen, CEO of Hong Kong and Greater China & North Asia at Standard Chartered. “This milestone reflects our commitment to advancing innovation to shape the future of finance and our belief in the transformative potential of tokenized money to support the real-world economy.”
She added that Standard Chartered “look forward to enabling new opportunities across payments, settlement, treasury management and other commercial applications, helping clients realize greater efficiency and value from tokenized money while contributing to the growth of Hong Kong as a global digital assets hub.”
The bank, which is also the largest shareholder of Anchorpoint, is expected to introduce several new commercial applications over the coming months, as HKDAP advances through its phased rollout, with the aim of laying the foundation for broader adoption and supporting the development of Hong Kong’s digital asset ecosystem.
In its August 24 press release, Standard Chartered revealed it had been working closely with its subsidiary to bring to market a diverse range of real-world use cases that leverage HKDAP’s native 24/7 capabilities as a programmable and interoperable on-chain settlement instrument.
Initial use cases span tokenized money market fund (TMMF) subscription and settlement, intragroup settlement activities to facilitate treasury and liquidity management, as well as cross-border payments, where tokenized money can reduce operational friction while improving capital mobility and transaction predictability.
Among the initial use cases, the bank said it plans to launch TMMF subscriptions and settlements with leading international and local asset managers in Q4 of this year. It also intends to adopt the intragroup settlement use case across its network soon.
“These pilots will serve as a blueprint for other institutional clients seeking to optimize their commercial activities with on-chain stablecoin, particularly multinational corporations looking to enhance cross-border application,” Standard Chartered said. “This, in turn, will reinforce Hong Kong’s position as a leading international financial and corporate treasury center.”
Anchorpoint received its stablecoin issuer license from the HKMA, the city’s de facto central bank, on April 10, amongst the first batch of recipients after the territory’s ‘Stablecoin Ordinance’ came into effect in August 2025.
The regulation was introduced in December 2024 with the aim of providing a supervisory and licensing regime for stablecoin providers, as well as handing enforcement powers over the sector to the HKMA.
Beginning August 2025, issuers were required to obtain a license from the HKMA and comply with specific requirements, such as having a paid-up share capital of HK$25 million ($3.21 million), a segregated pool of reserve assets that must be of “high quality and high liquidity with minimal investment risk,” redemptions at par value, and anti-money laundering (AML) rules.
“Achieving broad adoption of regulated tokenized money requires trusted channels that can connect new digital infrastructure with market needs,” Dominic Maffei, CEO and Co-Founder of Anchorpoint, said on Monday. “The participation of Standard Chartered as an authorized distributor marks an important milestone in the growth of the HKDAP ecosystem.”
He went on to suggest that “leveraging the bank’s international network and digital asset expertise will help expand commercial and cross-border opportunities with HKDAP, strengthening the ecosystem participation needed for the next phase of digital asset innovation.”
The Standard Chartered-Anchorpoint deal can be seen as the result of a broader push from Hong Kong to boost its credentials as a digital asset hub, which includes embracing the booming stablecoin sector.
Hong Kong stablecoin sector thriving
The global stablecoin market has reached new heights over the past couple of years, even as the digital asset space more broadly experienced several slumps. In December 2025, the stablecoin market reached a total market cap of over $300 billion and is predicted to achieve a $1.9 trillion valuation by the end of the decade.
These impressive figures were backed up by a recent report from Hong Kong stablecoin payments firm RedotPay, which revealed that cumulative transaction volume on its stablecoin-linked cards had surpassed $10.9 billion, with July alone generating $1.04 billion in transactions – the first time the category cleared a billion-dollar month.
“Think about what $10.9 billion means. It’s groceries, subscriptions, travel, and rent, paid for by ordinary people in more than a hundred countries who, just a few years ago, were looking for better ways to save, spend, and move their hard-earned funds,” said RedotPay.
While the first $10 billion in cumulative stablecoin card spending took three years to reach, RedotPay estimated that the next $10 billion will take about eight months, based on the current growth trajectory. In an August 25 blog post, the firm also predicted that annual spending could hit $50 billion by 2028, with the projection resting on the acceleration from $339 million in July 2025 to the billion-dollar month just recorded.
RedotPay’s own annualized payment volume now stands at $14 billion, with annualized revenue at $180 million and a user base of eight million across more than 100 countries.
“We have more than eight million users, and each of them has different motivations, challenges, and life circumstances. What connects them is a shared need for accessible payments,” the company said. “They’re not necessarily crypto traders. They’re people who found a better way to manage their finances because the previous options they had weren’t good enough.”
While many jurisdictions around the world are attempting to ride the stablecoin boomtime wave, which looks set to roll on, it remains a fact that almost 98% of global stablecoins are denominated in U.S. Dollars.
Hong Kong’s recent move to support local HKD issuers is beginning to bear fruit—as evidenced by Standard Chartered—but remains a drop in the ocean. Yet, it is also indicative of a broader global movement in response to USD stablecoin dominance.
The sovereign stablecoin era
A report published this month by international management consulting firm Arthur D. Little found that a fundamental shift is taking place in the global stablecoin landscape, away from a binary choice between resisting the spread of USD stablecoin or capitulating, towards replication. In short, a trend is developing of permitting regulated global stablecoins while developing local-currency alternatives.
“What has emerged is a third path: sovereign replication, executed at speed, producing a multicurrency architecture in which various instruments dominate different layers of the payment stack,” read the report. “The question is no longer whether this architecture will form; it’s how to position within it. The sovereign stablecoin era has arrived.”
Titled ‘The sovereign stablecoin era: Replication, not resistance,’ the report went on to outline how, from the UAE’s dirham-backed stablecoin (DDSC) to Brazil’s new virtual asset service provider (VASP) regime, Nigeria’s Compliant Naira (cNGN), Hong Kong’s stablecoin licensing wave, and Japan’s yen-pegged stablecoins, “sovereigns are building their own response.”
The report particularly pointed to the UAE as a regional template for how this third way—balancing support for local currency-issued stablecoin without actively curtailing USD dollar stablecoin—can be achieved.
The UAE established the Middle East’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for fiat-referenced tokens in June 2024. In February 2026, International Holding Company (IHC), Sirius International Holding, and First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), announced that the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) had approved the country’s dirham stablecoin to go live, marking a significant milestone towards a locally issued and denominated stablecoin market.
“DDSC marks a defining milestone in the UAE’s digital finance journey,” Syed Basar Shueb, Group CEO of IHC, said. “This transaction demonstrates that the UAE’s digital infrastructure is live, resilient, and ready to support real institutional financial activity.”
At the same time, RAKBANK, one of the country’s oldest banks, received regulatory approval in principle to issue its own dirham stablecoin.
Rather than supporting this sovereign effort by regulating out U.S. competition, the move was accompanied by Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL)—the U.S.-based issuer of the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market cap, USDC—securing a license in Abu Dhabi, while Ripple secured approval for Ripple USD (RLUSD).
According to the Arthur D. Little report: “The strategy is deliberate: permit regulated dollar stablecoins for cross-border flows while building a dirham-denominated layer for domestic commerce.”
The report went on to point to similar stories in Brazil, Nigeria, and Hong Kong, among other jurisdictions, all of which bring into focus this emerging strategy for how sovereign-backed, local-currency, and USD stablecoins can coexist across domestic, regional, and international payment layers.
“The monoculture is over. USD stablecoins hold the international settlement layer, but sovereign-sponsored and local-currency instruments are contesting domestic retail and regional layers,” concluded the report. “The strategic question is which stablecoin, in which layer, for which client, and in which corridor.”
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