HSBC launches RedCoin stablecoin for 3.3 million PayMe users

HSBC turned on RedCoin on Friday, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin for the 3.3 million users of its PayMe app. It is the bank's first stablecoin for everyday customers, and one of the first to go live under Hong Kong's new licensing regime.

The bank confirmed the launch on its own stablecoin page, which lists the coin as RedCoin (RCHKD) and shows it issued under Hong Kong Monetary Authority licence FRS02. The Block and the Hong Kong newspaper The Standard reported the rollout the same day, 23 October 2026.

What RedCoin is and how it works

RedCoin is pegged one to one to the Hong Kong dollar and is redeemable one to one for cash, subject to HSBC's terms. HSBC says each coin is fully backed at all times by high-quality, highly liquid segregated assets, and that the reserve must be worth at least as much as every coin in issue. PayMe is HSBC's widely used payment app in Hong Kong. For now it lives there. People can send it to friends or pay at more than 100,000 merchants already on the app.

A separate stablecoin wallet is planned inside the main HSBC Hong Kong banking app later in 2026. That version is meant to carry tokenized investment products, starting with a new share class of HSBC's Hong Kong dollar money market fund, which the bank says will take subscriptions from as little as HK$100. The two wallets will stay separate. Balances cannot move between them.

The licence and Hong Kong's rules

Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance took effect in August 2025. It brought fiat-referenced stablecoins under supervision and required any issuer to hold an HKMA licence and keep full reserves. In April 2026 the regulator granted its first two licences. One went to HSBC. The other went to Anchorpoint Financial, a joint venture of Standard Chartered, HKT and Animoca Brands. Other Asian banks are moving as well. Shinhan and SBI have begun testing a yen stablecoin for payments in Korea.

Maggie Ng, HSBC's chief executive for Hong Kong, said 'money, assets and information are moving from traditional infrastructure' as she set out the case for the coin. John O'Neill, the bank's managing director of digital assets and currencies, said more products would follow, including wholesale, corporate and institutional uses. Neither executive gave a target for how many PayMe users would switch on a wallet.

Hong Kong wants to be a regulated home for digital money, and the Ordinance sits at the center of that pitch. A licensed bank coin lets the city test whether tokenized cash can work at retail scale, under rules rather than around them. HSBC's early circulation shows how small that test still is.

The gaps

Scale is the first gap. HSBC's page showed RedCoin in circulation worth HKD 80,581,048.16 on 23 October 2026, against reserves of HKD 81,581,048.16 held in cash. That is about US$10 million. Spread across 3.3 million PayMe users, it is a rounding error. The coin did not exist weeks ago.

Proof of the reserves is the second gap. HSBC says its first independent attestation report will not appear until after the fourth quarter of 2026, so for now the circulation and reserve figures are the bank's own. The company has not published the blockchain the coin runs on, nor a public contract address. Redemption at par is promised, but only on terms HSBC has not spelled out in full. Regulators across the region are tightening reserve rules, and Singapore now requires full backing with no interest paid to holders.

One point matters for savers. RedCoin is not a protected deposit. It sits outside Hong Kong's Deposit Protection Scheme, which covers ordinary bank accounts up to a set limit. The HSBC name on the coin does not carry the safety net that the HSBC name on a current account does.

What to watch

Watch the attestation. HSBC's first reserve report, due after the fourth quarter, will be the first independent check on whether the backing matches the claim. Watch the HSBC Hong Kong app too, where the stablecoin wallet and the HK$100 money market fund are meant to arrive before year-end. And watch adoption. A coin with 3.3 million possible users and about HKD 80 million in circulation has a long way to climb.