Hong Kong Monetary Authority Expands EnsembleTX for 24-Hour Tokenized Transactions
Key Facts
On November 2, 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced that it had moved Project EnsembleTX into a phase allowing real-value tokenized transactions around the clock. The announcement expands a trial bringing banks and market participants together around the settlement of digital assets and tokenized deposits. The authority said the new phase could help banks and their customers distribute funds globally with greater flexibility, manage tokenized asset portfolios and improve treasury management. These uses focus on institutional transactions and funds management, while the announcement did not include the launch of new central bank money. The authority said trials would soon expand to include regulated stablecoins.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it had already completed secondary-market pilot trading in tokenized Exchange Fund bills, conducted by recognized dealers. The trials aimed to improve the efficiency of secondary trading and repurchase agreements, two use cases testing the transfer and settlement of bills in a tokenized-asset environment. The expansion to real-value transactions follows this trading, adding to the range of use cases being tested. Regulated stablecoins will enter trials at a later stage that the authority described as near, without specifying a date or the participating entities. In its statement, it said, "The authority will soon expand trials to include regulated stablecoins."
The pilot phase of EnsembleTX began in November 2025 as part of the broader Ensemble project. It aims to enable participating banks and industry players to conduct real-value transactions in tokenized Hong Kong dollar deposits and digital assets within a controlled trial environment. It was preceded by the Ensemble Sandbox, operated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority since August 2024 to study end-to-end tokenization use cases using experimental tokenized deposits. The authority launched the project in March 2024 to support the development of the tokenization ecosystem, and EnsembleTX entered its pilot phase in November 2025. This sequence shows the initiative moving from testing use cases to conducting real transactions within a controlled scope.
The project’s initial architecture relies on Ensemble’s interoperability layer, alongside Hong Kong’s existing real-time gross settlement system for settling interbank transactions. In a speech in June, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s deputy chief executive said banks and market participants could use tokenized deposits to settle tokenized assets on a delivery-versus-payment basis. According to the official, Ensemble brings digital assets, tokenized deposits and central bank money together in an interoperable ecosystem spanning multiple platforms. The authority had described the project’s next step as developing EnsembleTX to support settlement of tokenized deposits in central bank money, enabling continuous settlement around the clock. This was presented as a targeted next step, not an announcement of new central bank money.
The trials are linked to a regulatory framework that took effect on August 1, 2025, making the issuance of fiat-referenced stablecoins a regulated activity in Hong Kong requiring a licence. The inclusion of regulated stablecoins in the trials falls within this framework, while the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s announcement gave no details on participants or implementation arrangements. More broadly, an authority official said in March that expanding the tokenization ecosystem from 2026 would involve bringing in more banks, developing additional use cases and strengthening EnsembleTX. Representatives of about 60 banks took part in an event hosted by the authority in March to discuss project developments and the distributed ledger technology supervisory sandbox. This reflects broader institutional discussion of the initiative, while the announced trials remain tied to specific use cases.
In a separate update on financial infrastructure, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System would connect to UnionPay International by the end of 2026. The link is expected to gradually enable payments by scanning QR codes at more than 100 million merchants across UnionPay and its partner networks in Hong Kong, mainland China and more than 40 overseas markets. The connection was announced as part of Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026, whose 11th edition was jointly organized by the authority and Invest Hong Kong. In his June speech, the deputy chief executive noted that the existing digital-asset model may require synchronizing the off-chain ownership register when a token is transferred. He described settlement in central bank money and reducing reconciliation burdens as objectives for a future use case, while the authority said EnsembleTX trials would soon expand to include regulated stablecoins.