Standard Chartered said on Aug. 24 it will distribute HKDAP, the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorpoint Financial, becoming the first bank to do so. The bank is also Anchorpoint’s majority shareholder.
The Big Picture
- Standard Chartered will help eligible institutional clients and partners integrate HKDAP, the first bank distribution deal for a licensed Hong Kong stablecoin.
- Anchorpoint Financial issues HKDAP under one of the first two stablecoin licences the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted on April 10, 2026.
- Planned commercial uses cover fund subscriptions, settlement with asset managers, intragroup settlement and cross-border payments.
- Standard Chartered occupies both ends of this launch as the issuer’s majority shareholder and its first bank distributor.
- HSBC, the other first-round licensee, is preparing a rival Hong Kong dollar stablecoin for the second half of 2026.
Standard Chartered takes the distributor seat
The bank will initially help eligible institutional clients and partners integrate HKDAP into their operations, Standard Chartered said in its announcement. Anchorpoint Financial issues the token, whose name stands for Hong Kong Dollar At Par, under one of the first two issuer licences the Hong Kong Monetary Authority awarded in April.
Standard Chartered named four commercial applications it plans to roll out over the coming month:
- Fund subscriptions
- Settlement with asset managers
- Intragroup settlement across the bank’s global network
- Cross-border payments
Anchorpoint opened HKDAP to institutions on Aug. 12 through authorized distributors, starting with HashKey Exchange and OSL Group. Access stays limited to institutions, corporate clients and professional investors, and retail availability is not expected before late 2026.
The Stablecoins Ordinance, which took effect in August 2025, created Hong Kong’s licensing regime for fiat-referenced tokens and set the conditions both licensees operate under. HKDAP settles on a public blockchain rather than a permissioned ledger, so transfers between holders do not depend on any single institution’s operating hours.
Standard Chartered becomes the first bank to distribute Hong Kong’s regulated stablecoin, HKDAP.
— CoinLaw (@coinlaw_io) August 24, 2026
The HK dollar-backed token will support institutional settlements, fund subscriptions, and cross-border payments. pic.twitter.com/Yeigm0AzgD
The issuer’s largest shareholder is now its first distributor
Standard Chartered’s position here reaches past a distribution agreement. The bank co-founded Anchorpoint with Animoca Brands and HKT, holds the largest stake in it, and now supplies the client channel institutions use to obtain the token. Issuance economics and the main institutional distribution channel therefore sit inside one banking group, an arrangement that follows the bank’s wider institutional crypto expansion.
The announcement leaves the commercial terms unstated. Standard Chartered has not said which clients qualify as eligible, what fees apply at minting or redemption, whether the channel reaches institutions that bank elsewhere, or how the four use cases will be sequenced. Those gaps matter because one group now prices both ends of the transaction.
The announcement establishes the distribution role and the intended applications. It does not establish transaction volume, client commitments, or whether any of the four use cases is running today.
Institutions already holding HKDAP through HashKey Exchange or OSL Group should confirm which authorized distributor owns their onboarding relationship, what eligibility screening the bank applies, and the redemption terms attached to their existing route before adding a second one.
Hong Kong’s licensed field is still small
HSBC holds the other first-round licence and is preparing a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin for the second half of 2026, with PayMe and its 3.3 million users cited as a likely route to distribution. That would set a retail payment app against Anchorpoint’s institutional channel from the start. The HKMA register of licensed stablecoin issuers still lists only those two names.
Other firms are buying their way in. Payward, the parent of Kraken, agreed to acquire Reap Technologies for $600 million to expand its Hong Kong stablecoin payments operation. HashKey Exchange and OSL Group already hold authorized distributor status, which places Standard Chartered inside a stablecoin distribution market it does not control alone.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
Bank distribution answers the problem that has slowed most regulated stablecoins, which is reach. A licensed token with no path into corporate treasury workflows stays a pilot. Standard Chartered’s global network supplies existing institutional relationships, settlement rails and compliance onboarding, and that is the asset Anchorpoint could not have built at speed on its own.
The same arrangement raises a governance question the Hong Kong regime will have to work through in practice. One banking group now shapes issuance and controls the main institutional channel, and the disclosed detail on fees, eligibility and reserve handling remains thin. Hong Kong regulators have already set conditions on institutional crypto exposure, and the concentration in this launch sits in the same supervisory territory.
