Standard Chartered Launches Tokenised Deposits in Hong Kong

Standard Chartered launched a Tokenised Deposits service for corporate clients in Hong Kong on 2 November 2026. It settles on the HKMA's EnsembleTX with 24/7 interbank settlement in central bank money.

Standard Chartered announced on 2 November 2026 the launch of its Tokenised Deposits solution in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the first market in the group to offer the solution to corporate clients. The service settles on the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's (HKMA) EnsembleTX platform, with 24/7 interbank settlement in central bank money.

How it works

The solution was developed with support from the HKMA's Supervisory Incubator for Distributed Ledger Technology and is powered by EnsembleTX infrastructure. It lets tokenised deposits move in real time across participating banks. Interbank settlement uses central bank money, including wholesale CBDC (wCBDC), around the clock.

According to crypto.news, the service runs on Standard Chartered's proprietary blockchain infrastructure. It targets corporate treasurers, financial institutions, investment platforms and digital asset businesses. Eligible corporate clients can use tokenized commercial bank deposits for treasury management, investment transactions and transfers between entities within the same business.

This is a corporate and institutional service built on the HKMA's EnsembleTX pilot.

Who is involved

China AMC, Finloop and PantherTrade have executed live tokenised deposit transactions and settlement of tokenised money market funds through EnsembleTX. HashKey also joins the ecosystem.

Standard Chartered has also partnered with Fireblocks to integrate banking services into Fireblocks' digital asset platform, and HashKey has joined that initiative. The bank did not specify which services HashKey would initially offer, crypto.news reported.

One trade has been disclosed, via a KuCoin News item citing ME News. It is not an official figure. PantherTrade, which is owned by Futu, reportedly bought tokenized money market fund shares managed by China Asset Management (Hong Kong). It paid with a tokenized deposit of about HK$1 million (US$128,500), provided by Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong).

Mary Huen, CEO for Hong Kong and Greater China and North Asia, said the bank gained practical experience through some of EnsembleTX's earliest real-value transactions, per crypto.news. Ole Matthiessen, global head of Transaction Services and Digital Assets, described the aim as helping institutions move funds between banks and markets more efficiently.

Context

The HKMA launched EnsembleTX on 13 November 2025 as the pilot phase of Project Ensemble. It built on the Ensemble Sandbox, which has let industry pioneers test settlement with experimental tokenised deposits since August 2024. Interbank settlement was initially set to run through the HKD RTGS system, which, per The Paypers, operates only during standard business hours.

On 2 November 2026 the HKMA announced that EnsembleTX now supports 24/7 settlement of tokenized deposit transactions using tokenized central bank money. CoinGape reports that EnsembleTX has 12 participating banks and 20 industry pioneers. Those figures describe the HKMA pilot as a whole, not Standard Chartered's client base.

This is not the bank's first tokenised deposit product. In December 2025 it launched a blockchain-based solution with Ant International, covering Hong Kong and Singapore.

What to keep in perspective

No volume or client data have been disclosed, so the scale of the launch is unknown. The 24/7 benefit applies between participating banks, and the service is aimed at eligible corporate clients and institutions. No pricing, fees, volume caps or client numbers were found. Standard Chartered plans to introduce the offering in other markets over time.

Standard Chartered Launches Tokenised Deposits in Hong Kong

How it works

Who is involved

Context

What to keep in perspective

Sources

Discussion

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