Tokenised central bank money in Hong Kong now runs 24/7

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has moved the pilot phase of Project Ensemble to round-the-clock settlement. Ensemble TX now supports interbank settlement of tokenised deposit transactions in tokenised central bank money on a 24/7 basis, so participants can settle tokenised transactions outside conventional operating hours. Participation has grown to 12 banks and 20 industry pioneers.

The change is in the settlement asset. When Ensemble TX launched in November 2025, it used the Hong Kong dollar Real Time Gross Settlement system for interbank settlement of tokenised deposit transactions, running real-value transactions in a controlled pilot. Those included corporate treasury management and tokenised money market fund transactions using tokenised deposits issued by participating banks. Settling in tokenised central bank money removes the dependence on the conventional system's hours.

The named participants show who is testing it. Banks include Bank of China (Hong Kong), China Construction Bank (Asia), ICBC (Asia), Standard Chartered (Hong Kong) and HSBC; industry pioneers include Ant International, BlackRock and China Asset Management (Hong Kong). The Securities and Futures Commission's chief executive, Julia Leung, says tokenised deposits can now power round-the-clock transactions, including secondary trading of tokenised funds on licensed platforms.

HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue describes the project as having moved, in two years, from experimentation to promoting the commercialisation of tokenisation, and notes a trend of banks worldwide launching tokenised deposits. The release sets no date for a move beyond the pilot. The same day the HKMA launched Project SAGE on agentic finance and, with HKUST, a post-quantum cryptography toolkit for banks.