HSBC has announced that its HKD stablecoin will be branded as RedCoin, although it has not yet been issued. The bank has said it would launch during H2 2026, and there is a reasonable chance it could wait for Hong Kong Fintech Week in November. In the meantime, the bank published results from its stablecoin survey conducted in June.
The survey found that almost three quarters of respondents could identify at least one stablecoin use case, with 60% understanding it is fiat backed. However, there were some comprehension gaps, with just over a quarter thinking stablecoins are government issued, perhaps because HSBC is one of Hong Kong’s banknote issuers. While the survey notes that fraud protection is a desirable feature (53%), unveiling the brand prior to launch gives scammers time to claim their coin is the real deal.
At launch, HSBC plans to make the HKD stablecoin available via its PayMe app, which has 3.3 million retail users. Originally, the planned use cases were peer to peer payments, merchant payments and subscription to tokenized investments, all within HSBC’s own ecosystem. The tokenized investments use case appears to have been dropped, and we would note it may have required a second set of regulatory approvals from the SFC. The bank now also plans to target wholesale, corporate and institutional use cases.
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