Hong Kong Monetary Authority: Digital Hong Kong dollar may bring unique value to Hong Kong’s existing payment ecosystem in three aspects

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority released the "First Phase Report of the "Digital Hong Kong Dollar" Pilot Scheme". The first phase of trials of the pilot scheme shows that the digital Hong Kong dollar may bring unique value to Hong Kong’s existing payments ecosystem in three aspects, including programmability, tokenization and instant settlement. A digital Hong Kong dollar has the potential to facilitate faster, more cost-effective and inclusive transactions, while enabling new types of economic activities. Since the pilot program trials were conducted on a small scale in a controlled environment, more research and evaluation work is needed to determine whether these benefits can be applied on a large scale in actual scenarios. The HKMA has not yet made a decision on whether and when to officially launch the digital Hong Kong dollar. The HKMA will draw practical experience from the results of the first phase of the pilot scheme to refine the possible implementation of the "digital Hong Kong dollar". The next phase of the pilot project will explore new use cases for the digital Hong Kong dollar and conduct a more in-depth study of some of the trial results from the first phase.