Anchorpoint Financial Limited has launched HKDAP, the first regulated Hong Kong dollar backed stablecoin, opening it to institutional users on August 12, 2026. The joint venture behind it brings together Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited as the largest shareholder, telecom operator HKT, and Animoca Brands, one of the largest investors in web3 gaming.

Access is currently limited to institutional users through authorised distributors including HashKey Exchange and OSL Group, with the initial rollout focused on payments and settlement. Retail access is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026, expanding the token beyond professional counterparties into general use.

The name is functional rather than branded. HKDAP stands for Hong Kong dollar at par, and the token is backed one to one by high quality, highly liquid Hong Kong dollar denominated reserves held as segregated assets, a requirement written into the Stablecoins Ordinance.

The Licence and the Framework Behind It

Anchorpoint received its Stablecoin Issuer Licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on April 10, 2026, becoming one of only two entities granted an initial licence under the new regime. The Stablecoins Ordinance took effect on August 1, 2025, establishing the rules that issuers now operate under.

The joint venture itself was established in February 2025, more than a year before the licence arrived, which gave the partners time to build the operation around a regulatory framework that was still being finalised.

Executives across the partnership framed the launch around infrastructure rather than speculation. Bill Winters, Group Chief Executive at Standard Chartered, said the bank is "committed to embracing innovation and see ourselves as a vital link between clients and financial markets." Mary Huen, Chief Executive Officer for Hong Kong and Greater China and North Asia, described the licence as a breakthrough that "unveils a new chapter for Hong Kong in advancing its digital assets ecosystem." Dominic Maffei, Chief Executive Officer of Anchorpoint, said the venture focuses "on empowering the ecosystem with a secure, accessible and regulated form of tokenised money."

The intended use cases span settlement and distribution of tokenised real world assets, cross border capital and payment flows, international payments, and general use as a medium of exchange in the digital economy. Distribution runs on a business to business to consumer model, meaning authorised partners handle the last mile to end users rather than Anchorpoint serving them directly. Early adoption incentive programmes are available to partners building real world applications on top of it.

Hong Kong's issuer field is filling out quickly. HSBC is preparing its own stablecoin for the second half of 2026, and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, expanded its regional operations through a 600 million USD acquisition of Reap Technologies. The global stablecoin market sat at close to 287 billion USD at the time of the launch.

Why a Games Investor Is Building Money Rails

Animoca Brands is not a bank, and its presence in a stablecoin joint venture alongside a global bank and a telecom operator is the detail that connects this to gaming. The company is among the most active investors in web3 games, holding positions across a large portfolio of studios, infrastructure providers, and virtual world projects.

Evan Auyang, Group President at Animoca Brands, has described stablecoins as "the bridge between native and enterprise Web3" and called the token "crucial for Hong Kong's financial infrastructure." That positioning explains the strategic logic. A company with exposure to hundreds of game economies has a direct interest in whether those economies can settle in a stable, regulated currency rather than in volatile tokens.

The practical problem this addresses is one every onchain game runs into. In game economies denominated in a project's own token inherit that token's price swings, which makes pricing an item, paying a tournament prize, or budgeting a guild treasury unpredictable. Most studios end up reaching for a stablecoin, and until now the options in Asia were dollar denominated tokens issued outside any local regulatory framework.

A regulated HKD stablecoin changes the calculation for studios operating in or targeting Hong Kong and the wider region. Prize pools, marketplace settlement, and creator payouts can be denominated in a currency with a licence behind it and reserves subject to supervision, which matters for any studio that has to explain its payment flows to a partner, a platform, or a regulator.

The retail phase in the fourth quarter is the point where this becomes relevant to players rather than only to businesses. Until then, HKDAP serves institutional settlement, which in practice means the infrastructure gets tested by payment flows before it reaches consumers. Games looking to plug into it will be waiting on the authorised distributor layer to open up rather than integrating directly with the issuer.