On 2 November 2026, at Hong Kong FinTech Week, the HKMA said it has advanced EnsembleTX to enable 24/7 real-value transactions for banks and their clients. Recognised Dealers have completed trial secondary-market trades of tokenised Exchange Fund Bills, and the HKMA says it will soon expand the trials to include regulated stablecoins. The release gives no start date, participant count or volumes.
Why it matters: 24/7 settlement in central bank money frees tokenised deposits from RTGS hours; the stablecoin trial, which brings licensed non-bank tokens onto the same HKMA infrastructure, is the larger change. R.M.
For Ethereum: Under the HKMA's interoperability standard, banks settle with each other in central bank money and stablecoins enter EnsembleTX only as an asset, so public chains get no role in Hong Kong's interbank settlement.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced its tokenisation measures in a press release on 2 November 2026, the day it co-organised Hong Kong FinTech Week with Invest Hong Kong (para 1). Under Project Ensemble (para 5):
The HKMA has “advanced EnsembleTX to a new stage, enabling 24/7 real-value transactions”. It names global fund allocation and treasury management as uses for banks and their clients.
Recognised Dealers completed trial trades of tokenised Exchange Fund Bills in the secondary market, to improve the efficiency of secondary and repo trading.
The HKMA “will soon expand the trials to include regulated stablecoins”.
The HKMA also launched tConnect Launchpad with Cyberport, for financial institutions, technology firms and digital asset firms to test tokenisation use cases (para 6).
The release does not say when 24/7 operation started, how many banks or dealers took part, or how many tokenised Exchange Fund Bills were traded. Julia Leung, Chief Executive Officer of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), described the same step in her FinTech Week panel remarks as “24/7 interbank settlement in Central Bank Digital Currency, allowing tokenised deposits to power around-the-clock real-value transactions, including those in tokenised funds” (page 3).
EnsembleTX launches, with interbank settlement through the Hong Kong dollar Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system. The standard’s first phase is “Settlement Anchored on HKD RTGS”.
16 September 2026
The Policy Address (Regulatory Wire) commits to CBDC settlement and 24/7 operations under EnsembleTX “by around the end of this year” (para 50), and to tokenised Exchange Fund Bill tests so banks can use more than HK$1.3 trillion of them round the clock (para 35).
2 November 2026
The HKMA reports 24/7 real-value transactions and trial trades of tokenised Exchange Fund Bills. Ms Leung’s description matches the standard’s second phase, “24/7 Settlement via Tokenised Central Bank Money”.
Not dated
Regulated stablecoins join the trials “soon” (para 5). The standard names single-ledger delivery-versus-payment as “one possible longer-term model” (page 5).
24/7 settlement removes the hours limit on tokenised deposit payments between banks. A corporate treasury or a fund can now move tokenised deposits at a weekend or overnight, with the banks settling in central bank money, where before the interbank leg waited for RTGS to open. Ms Leung connected the step to the SFC’s approval of secondary trading of tokenised money market funds on licensed virtual asset trading platforms a week earlier. A fund unit that trades round the clock on a platform can now be paid for with a tokenised deposit that also settles round the clock.
The stablecoin trial is the bigger step. It would put tokens issued by licensed non-banks on the same HKMA infrastructure as central bank money and tokenised deposits, under a standard written to link “tokenised assets, tokenised money, and central bank money” (page 1). The release gives no date, scope or issuer for the trial.
The HKMA publishes no volumes for EnsembleTX, and the standard puts no dates on its phases. It is still unclear whether 24/7 settlement is a standing service or ends with the pilot, and whether tokenised Exchange Fund Bills will be issued beyond trials.
For Ethereum
Stablecoins will enter EnsembleTX as an asset settled against central bank money, never as money between banks, so public chains gain no role in Hong Kong’s interbank settlement. The HKMA’s interoperability standard says central bank money “remains the settlement asset of choice for wholesale financial transactions”, because private tokenised money carries credit and settlement risks that central bank money does not (page 1). A stablecoin issued on Ethereum could be one side of a trade on EnsembleTX, but the leg between banks settles in central bank money on infrastructure the HKMA runs.
No document describes the stablecoin trial, so this read rests on inference from the standard. The release does not say which chains the trial stablecoins are issued on, and the HKMA has not named the ledger technology behind EnsembleTX (pilot entry).
Elsewhere in Asia
The State of Play on settlement projects compares the three markets. India’s Reserve Bank settles tokenised certificates of deposit and the Demat 2.0 bond pilot in wholesale CBDC on its Unified Markets Interface. Singapore’s MAS has issued tokenised MAS Bills that settle in wholesale CBDC on the SGD Testnet, and its BLOOM initiative covers settlement in tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins, which the central banks of Malaysia and Thailand joined in October 2026. Hong Kong’s CMU OmniClear is building a digital asset platform for 24-hour onchain settlement of digital bonds.
What to watch
The start of the stablecoin trials and the issuers named; whether tokenised Exchange Fund Bills move from trial trades to issuance; the HKMA’s plan for EnsembleTX after its 2026 pilot period; and the launch of CMU OmniClear’s digital asset platform, due by the end of 2026.