Hong Kong's central bank begins second phase of digital currency pilot

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has announced the launch of the second phase of its e-HKD central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. The regulator will build on the first phase, which tested the use of a CBDC in domestic retail payments, offline payments and settlement of tokenised assets, and explore new applications for a digital version of the Hong Kong dollar. The second phase will focus on select pilots from the first phase, such as programmability, tokenisation and atomic settlement, and also explore new use cases. The HKMA has also started a regulatory sandbox project to test CBDCs for wholesale use and tokenisation.