Hong Kong’s central moneymarkets unit (CMU) will launch new products late this year as digital finance advances with stock, foreign exchange, and bond markets maturing, said Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and honorary president of the Treasury Markets Association Council.
The new products enable round-the-clock, real-time on-chain settlement in support of e-HKD and central bank digital currency, Yue said at the Treasury Markets Summit 2026 on Wednesday.
Yue said the HKMA will also explore accepting tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins for platform settlement. Together, these measures are expected to lower transaction costs, enhance price discovery, improve settlement efficiency, strengthen cross-border connectivity, and foster an active secondary market. He added that piloting the tokenization of Exchange Fund bills will help banks explore ways to optimize asset-liability management.
Hong Kong has become a leading global hub for tokenized bond issuance, accounting for half of the world's digital bonds issued in the first half of this year, Yue noted. The HKMA will support the government's regular issuance of digital bonds, promote deeper integration with digital currencies, and encourage broader adoption by the industry.
On bonds, Yue said Hong Kong has achieved a 20 percent compound annual growth rate over the past 20 years, with about a quarter of Asia's international bond issuance last year taking place in the city, driven mainly by dim sum bonds. He added that the Hong Kong dollar-denominated wonton bonds issued by overseas entities also rose sharply by 64 percent year on year globally in the first half
Yue pointed out that these measures offer bond issuers more choices in tenor and currency, while giving investors a broader range of products for asset allocation, hedging, and liquidity management. As yuan fixed income and currency trading grows, he believes Hong Kong's financial industry will actively provide clients with offshore yuan foreign exchange, financing, and treasury solutions.
Yue mentioned that the HKMA is nurturing a healthy ecosystem and using government bond issuance to play a demonstrative role – not only by issuing multi-currency bonds and expanding issuance size, but also by extending the tenor of government-issued offshore yuan and Hong Kong dollar bonds to provide a long-term reference for the yield curve and promote private-sector bond issuance.
He said average daily foreign exchange turnover in Hong Kong in April this year rose about 20 percent from last October, with active yuan real-time payment settlement and trade settlement, and yuan loans growing nearly 30 percent.
