HSBC says its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, RedCoin, has attracted 50,000 users since it launched on Oct. 23. Group CEO Georges Elhedery gave the figure on Monday during a panel on the first day of Hong Kong FinTech Week, the South China Morning Post reported.
"Of course, our target is multimillion users," Elhedery said. "But it just shows one can scale some of these features when the technology is sound and safe, and when the regulatory environment is also there and safe."
He credited the "comfortable" regulatory environment provided by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
Where RedCoin works today
RedCoin (RCHKD) debuted on PayMe by HSBC, which has more than 3.3 million users. They can activate a stablecoin wallet in the app, send money to friends and pay at more than 100,000 merchants. HSBC says merchant payments and wallet top-ups are already live.
"We are encouraged by early customer usage," said Maggie Ng, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong.
The coin is issued under licence FRS02, which the HKMA granted to The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in April 2026. It is one of two licensed stablecoins in the city. The other licensee is Anchorpoint, a joint venture of Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT. It opened beta access to its HKDAP coin in August and is eyeing retail use "as early as end-2026."
Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance took effect on Aug. 1, 2025. The HKMA has approved two issuer licences out of 36 applications.
Elhedery said RedCoin will later be offered to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank clients, but he gave no timetable. HSBC also plans to add it to the HSBC HK Mobile Banking app and let customers subscribe to tokenised products with it. One of them is a new share class of the bank's HKD money market fund.
What the reserve data shows
HSBC publishes daily figures on its RedCoin page. As of Nov. 2, HKD 87,752,366.08 in coins was in circulation. The market value of reserve assets was HKD 88,752,366.08, all of it held in cash. The seven-day increase in circulation was HKD 6,748,878.84.
HSBC says each coin is fully backed at all times by segregated assets and is designed to be redeemable 1:1 for Hong Kong dollars. Weekly reports are unaudited. The first independent attestation of the reserves is expected after Q4 2026.
The Hong Kong dollar trades against the US dollar in a band of 7.75 to 7.85, so the circulating supply is worth roughly US$11 million. Dollar stablecoins such as Tether's USDT run to well over $100 billion, which puts RedCoin's scale in perspective. The seven-day increase is a small share of the total, so most of the supply was already in circulation before last week.
How big the opportunity is
Fifty thousand users is about 1.5% of PayMe's 3.3 million users. HSBC has not said how many of them are active or how much they hold. Elhedery's stated goal is multimillion users.
HSBC points to its own research for the demand case. A June survey of 1,060 customers aged 18 to 64 found that easy access through existing apps and faster payments were among the strongest drivers of stablecoin adoption. In the same survey, 53% of respondents said HKD stablecoins could strengthen economic competitiveness. Before launch, staff pilots with nearly 100 users tested the full customer journey, from minting to live transfers.
John O'Neill, HSBC's managing director for digital assets and currencies, said: "This is only the beginning." He said the bank will add more products, including wholesale corporate and institutional use cases.
RedCoin joins a set of tokenised offerings in Hong Kong. HSBC Orion has issued more than US$8.3 billion in digital bonds since 2023. The HSBC Gold Token, launched in 2024, had recorded 390,000 trades worth US$2.5 billion by the end of August 2026.
Hong Kong FinTech Week runs through Nov. 6, and stablecoins and payments are among its main themes.
HSBC also plans an AI institute
HSBC also said it will set up a global AI & Emerging Technology Institute in Hong Kong's Northern Metropolis. It is expected to start operations in early 2027 and will work with selected academic and technology partners. One early focus is defending against new fraud attempts in the "agentic AI world."
The announcement follows a mid-October plan to double the bank's AI specialists in Hong Kong to 300. That plan came after reports that HSBC's decision to open an AI centre in Singapore had raised concerns at the HKMA, according to the SCMP.
David Liao Yi-chien, co-CEO for Asia and the Middle East, said HSBC would explore AI opportunities "thoughtfully and strategically."
Gunel Ismayilova
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