Hong Kong’s Biggest Bank Puts a Stablecoin in 3 Million Wallets

What happened

In brief HSBC launched RedCoi, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin (a digital token meant to hold a fixed value, usually one dollar) licensed by the HKMA, on its PayMe app, with more than 3.3 million users able to activate wallets in the coming days. HSBC got its issuer license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city's de facto central bank, in April, under a regime that took effect in August 2025.

HSBC switched on its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin inside PayMe on Friday, testing whether a bank-issued token can become everyday money. Decrypt News Coins Hong Kong’s Biggest Bank Puts a Stablecoin in 3 Million Wallets HSBC switched on its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin inside PayMe on Friday, testing whether a bank-issued token can become everyday money.

Users can send RedCoin to friends or pay at more than 100,000 PayMe merchants. HSBC plans to add the token to its HK Mobile Banking app later this year.

Banking giant HSBC switched on RedCoin on Friday, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin that more than 3.3 million PayMe users will be able to activate in the coming days to pay friends or shop at more than 100,000 merchants, according to the bank's announcement . A stablecoin is a crypto token designed to always be worth one unit of a regular currency, so one RedCoin (ticker RCHKD) should equal one Hong Kong dollar.

In practice, someone in Hong Kong can now pay for lunch with blockchain-based money issued by the same bank that may already hold their salary, without ever opening a crypto exchange. Until now, stablecoins have mostly been a crypto-company business.

Tether's USDT (Tether’s dollar-pegged token) and Circle's USDC (Circle’s dollar-pegged token) dominate a market worth more than $300 billion, and most of that money lives on trading platforms, not at the corner noodle shop. It beat a crowded field of at least 36 companies competing by September of that year.