Hong Kong Now Settles Tokenized Deposits 24/7 in Central Bank Money, With 12 Banks On Board

Hong Kong’s banks no longer have to wait for office hours to settle tokenized deposits with each other. The city’s central bank has switched its tokenization pilot to round-the-clock settlement in tokenized central bank money, and the list of banks using it has grown by more than two-thirds in a year.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on Nov. 2 that Ensemble TX, the pilot phase of Project Ensemble, now supports 24/7 interbank settlement of tokenized deposit transactions. Twelve banks and 20 other industry firms now take part, up from seven banks and 13 firms when the pilot launched.

Nine days later, on Nov. 11, the HKMA and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) hosted about 200 industry practitioners at a joint seminar to push the next step: turning the new rails into everyday products.

What Changed on Nov. 2

Tokenized deposits are ordinary bank deposits recorded as digital tokens. They let customers move money on a shared ledger while the funds stay on a regulated bank’s balance sheet.

When Ensemble TX launched on Nov. 13, 2025, transfers between banks were settled through Hong Kong’s existing real-time gross settlement system for Hong Kong dollars. The HKMA said at the time that it would upgrade the pilot to settle in tokenized central bank money on a 24/7 basis.

That upgrade is now live. Participating banks and other firms can use tokenized central bank money to settle tokenized transactions outside normal operating hours. The HKMA said this helps meet “the needs of an increasingly global and always-on digital financial market.”

The pilot’s early uses have been corporate treasury management and transactions in tokenized money market funds. Both benefit from being able to move cash at night and on weekends.

Five More Banks and Seven New Partners

The five banks that joined in 2026 are Bank of Communications (Hong Kong), China CITIC Bank International, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Asia), Industrial Bank’s Hong Kong branch and Nanyang Commercial Bank, according to the HKMA’s annex.

They join the original seven: Bank of China (Hong Kong), China Construction Bank (Asia), Fubon Bank (Hong Kong), Fusion Bank, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), The Bank of East Asia and HSBC.

Seven new industry pioneers also signed up. They include digital asset firm HashKey Group, JINGDONG Technology and CMU OmniClear, alongside CNPC Finance (HK), EX.IO, Finloop and Panthertrade. Asset managers BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, plus Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, have been part of the pilot since 2025.

Regulators Say the Testing Phase Is Over

Officials framed the move as a shift from trials to business. “In just two years, Project Ensemble has transitioned from experimentation and piloting to a new phase focused on promoting the commercialisation of tokenisation applications in Hong Kong,” HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue said.

Yue added that “a trend is emerging in the launch of tokenised deposits by banks worldwide” and said he expects commercialization of tokenized deposits and digital assets to “gain momentum.”

SFC Chief Executive Julia Leung called 24/7 settlement “a significant step towards a more scalable tokenised market.” She said tokenized deposits can now power round-the-clock activity, including secondary trading of tokenized funds on licensed platforms.

At the Nov. 11 seminar, the SFC’s Elisa Ng put it more bluntly: “Tokenisation in Hong Kong is moving beyond experimentation towards commercialisation. The next stage is to generate traffic on these digital rails.”

Funds That Trade Around the Clock

The settlement upgrade has a partner on the investment side. According to the HKMA, the SFC has approved round-the-clock secondary trading for tokenized money market funds. Combined with 24/7 tokenized deposits, that lets investors move between cash and fund holdings in real time instead of waiting for the next business day.

The HKMA said it will work with the SFC to broaden the use of tokenized deposits to settle “various types of tokenised investment products.” Nelson Chow, the HKMA’s executive director for financial infrastructure, described digital money and tokenized products as “essential public utilities” for the city’s tokenization ecosystem.

Part of a Wider Digital Asset Build-Out

Ensemble is one piece of a broader framework. The HKMA began testing tokenized deposit settlement for digital asset transactions in the Ensemble Sandbox in August 2024. On April 10, 2026, it granted the city’s first stablecoin issuer licences to Anchorpoint Financial and HSBC under the Stablecoins Ordinance.

Hong Kong has also been clarifying the rules around digital assets more broadly, including how crypto gains are taxed.

Other central banks are moving in the same direction. Kazakhstan recently priced its first tokenized notes, and three Asia-Pacific central banks tested a way to cut FX settlement risk on shared ledgers.

Traditional Finance Catches Up With Always-On Markets

The pitch behind Ensemble is simple. Money should be able to move whenever a market is open, and digital markets never close.

Crypto users have had that for years. The Bitcoin network has settled transactions around the clock, weekends and holidays included, since its first block in January 2009. Hong Kong’s banking system is now building regulated, bank-backed rails that work on a similar schedule.

For crypto firms in the pilot, such as HashKey Group, 24/7 tokenized bank money could make it easier to connect licensed digital asset services with the traditional banking system.

The HKMA has not published transaction volumes for Ensemble TX, so it is too early to measure how much activity the new rails carry. What is clear is the direction: more banks, more partners and settlement that no longer stops at the end of the business day.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.