Hong Kong’s central bank has completed the first phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot project and is preparing to start the second round of testing of the Hong Kong Digital Dollar (e-HKD).
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has announced the successful completion of the retail CBDC’s first round of testing and is preparing to launch the next phase.
Under the first phase, the regulator explored the use of e-HKD in six areas, namely:
- full-fledged payments;
- offline payments;
- programmable payments;
- tokenized deposits;
- settlement of tokenized assets;
- transactions in the Web3 space.
The main conclusion of the first phase was to prove that e-HKD could benefit users and local businesses. In particular, the HKMA highlights programming, tokenization, and atomic transactions as three key areas in which Hong Kong’s CBDC can actively develop.
The next phase of the e-HKD pilot will focus on further exploring promising use cases for the Hong Kong Digital Dollar and considering new ones. The HKMA also plans to review possible CBDC design options, focusing on distributed ledger technology (DLT), examining its interoperability and scalability.
The e-HKD pilot project was launched in May this year with the participation of 16 local companies. The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong updated the regulatory requirements for local crypto companies.
