A bank becomes a stablecoin distributor

Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) has become the first bank authorised to distribute HKDAP, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorpoint Financial. The bank will take it to institutional clients for tokenised fund settlement, treasury operations and cross-border payments.

The licensing chain

Anchorpoint received its issuer licence on 10 April 2026 under Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance, in force since 1 August 2025. Licensed issuers must satisfy standards on reserve backing, redemption, governance and anti-money-laundering controls. Anchorpoint is a joint venture of Standard Chartered's Hong Kong arm, HKT and Animoca Brands.

Which is worth stating plainly: the bank distributing the stablecoin part-owns the company issuing it. That is not concealed and it is not unusual in payment infrastructure, but it does mean the distribution agreement is not an arm's-length endorsement of the instrument by an outside institution.

The timetable

• Near term, intragroup settlement across the bank's own network.
• Q4 2026, HKDAP-denominated subscriptions and settlement for tokenised money market funds, with asset managers.

Chief executive Mary Huen said that since Anchorpoint received its licence the bank has seen strong interest from clients exploring how HKDAP can support their business. Starting with intragroup settlement is the conservative sequence: the first counterparty is the bank itself, and the failure mode of an internal transfer is contained.