HSBC Rolls Out HKD-Backed RedCoin Stablecoin to 3.3 Million PayMe Users and 100,000 Merchants
HSBC Rolls Out HKD-Backed RedCoin Stablecoin to 3.3 Million PayMe Users and 100,000 Merchants #
HSBC has launched its first Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin, HSBC RedCoin (RCHKD), making it available to more than 3.3 million users of its PayMe payments app starting October 23, 2026.
The phased rollout gives PayMe customers the ability to activate a RedCoin stablecoin wallet directly within the app, with no minimum balance requirement and no new account-opening process needed. Once activated, users can send RedCoin instantly to other PayMe users or spend it at any of the platform’s roughly 100,000 participating merchants across Hong Kong. HSBC said it expects the wallet feature to be available across its full PayMe user base before the weekend following launch.
RedCoin is issued by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation under stablecoin issuer licence FRS02, which the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted to HSBC in April 2026, the same month it licensed Anchorpoint Financial, a venture backed by Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT, making the two the first regulated stablecoin issuers in the territory under the Stablecoins Ordinance. Each RedCoin unit is pegged 1:1 to the Hong Kong dollar and backed by high-quality liquid assets held in segregated accounts. HSBC’s disclosure at launch showed approximately HK$80.58 million in circulating RedCoin against HK$81.58 million held in reserves.
Before the public launch, HSBC ran an internal pilot with nearly 100 employees to test the full customer journey, from minting to wallet activation to live transfers, and to assess how RedCoin integrated with PayMe’s existing payment infrastructure.
Lawrence Li, head of PayMe, confirmed that RedCoin is currently available exclusively through PayMe and the HSBC Hong Kong Mobile Banking App. HSBC plans to extend the stablecoin’s reach by integrating a RedCoin wallet into its broader Hong Kong mobile banking app before the end of 2026, at which point the bank intends to enable customers to subscribe to tokenised investment products, including money market funds, starting from as little as HK$100.
Maggie Ng, HSBC’s chief executive for Hong Kong, described the launch as part of a broader shift in financial infrastructure “from traditional infrastructure to always-on, data-rich and increasingly programmable digital networks.” HSBC has also signalled plans to expand RedCoin to corporate and institutional use cases over time, following the initial consumer-focused rollout.
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