Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) has completed an offline payments trial for Hong Kong’s central bank digital currency (CBDC). The experiment aimed to test the inclusiveness, security and reliability of payments, particularly for areas without a stable internet connection.
The tests ran over several months with the participation of 200 individuals and at least ten merchants. Participants were issued with hypothetical e-HKD, which they could spend at the selected retailers. Based on a gallery of photos, offline payments used (prepaid) smart cards as well the NFC function on smartphones.
The trials covered a variety of sectors, including public transport, campus merchants at the University of Hong Kong, restaurants and an office-flea market festival. This allowed Standard Chartered to gauge the effectiveness of offline e-HKD payments in small-value, high-volume transaction environments. Giesecke & Devrient was the technology partner.
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