Anchorpoint, the venture backed by Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT, began a limited rollout of HKDAP, its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, four months after receiving one of Hong Kong's first two issuer licenses from the monetary authority.
The beta phase grants minting and redemption access to eligible institutions and professional investors through HashKey Exchange and OSL Group, which Anchorpoint designated as authorized distributors. HashKey reported completing its first mint and redemption transaction on the system. The structure mirrors the staged rollout typical of regulated stablecoin launches in Asia, where authorities require institutional testing before retail onboarding.
Anchorpoint received its issuer license on April 10, 2026, from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority under the city's new stablecoin regulatory framework. Standard Chartered, one of Hong Kong's oldest banking institutions, anchors the venture alongside Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong gaming and Web3 firm, and HKT, the telecommunications operator controlled by CITIC. The partnership concentrates retail banking reach, gaming-sector tokenization capability, and infrastructure assets under one issuer.
HashKey Exchange and OSL Group control the largest institutional distribution networks for digital assets in Hong Kong. HashKey, a digital asset exchange owned by the Cayman Islands-registered Zhu Su entity, has operated under a money services license in the territory since 2023. OSL Group, majority-owned by Singapore's Nomura subsidiary, holds one of Hong Kong's two money services operator licenses for digital assets and custody.
Retail access to HKDAP could begin as early as the end of 2026, according to Anchorpoint. The timeline would place consumer trading within 16 months of license issuance, a faster rollout than comparable stablecoin projects in developed markets. Hong Kong's regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers requires that reserve assets match circulating supply and that issuers maintain minimum capital buffers, conditions Standard Chartered can easily meet.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority approved Anchorpoint and one other issuer under new guidelines published in January 2026. Regulators have positioned stablecoin licensing as a policy priority to deepen Hong Kong's position as a digital assets hub and to capture tokenization activity that might otherwise migrate to Singapore or Dubai. The two approved issuers have now both launched: Anchorpoint enters with institutional backing and retail ambitions; the second issuer's rollout strategy remains undisclosed.
Anchorpoint's institutional-first approach compresses the capital formation risk typical of greenfield stablecoin launches. Standard Chartered's balance sheet absorbs redemption risk during the beta phase, and the bank's deposit-taking license ensures customer funds cannot be commingled with issuer reserves, a backstop that retail stablecoin users in less regulated markets lack. Neither HashKey nor OSL Group disclosed transaction volumes from the initial mint period, so the economic traction of HKDAP against other Hong Kong dollar on-chain representations cannot yet be measured.
Retail adoption by year-end 2026 would place HKDAP's launch window in the same quarter as Hong Kong's broader digital bond and central bank digital currency initiatives, all accelerating toward consumer deployment. If Anchorpoint achieves retail access before Q1 2027, it would be the first fully regulated and bank-backed stablecoin to reach retail users in Hong Kong.
