Standard Chartered switches on round-the-clock tokenized deposits in Hong Kong, its first market, as the HKMA takes EnsembleTX to 24-hour settlement

Standard Chartered said on Monday that corporate clients in Hong Kong, a group crypto.news says includes corporate treasurers, financial institutions, investment platforms and digital asset businesses, can now transfer bank deposits 24 hours a day over its own blockchain, with transfers between participating banks running through the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's EnsembleTX platform, CoinDesk and crypto.news reported. Hong Kong is the first market in the bank's network to get the service.

A tokenized deposit is still money held at a bank, CoinDesk notes, unlike a stablecoin from a private issuer, and interbank settlement can run in central bank money, including wholesale central bank digital currency, according to crypto.news, which says the bank presents that as a way to improve settlement reliability and reduce counterparty exposure. CoinDesk says it lets businesses move funds outside regular banking hours without first converting deposits into stablecoins.

China AMC, Finloop and PantherTrade have already completed live tokenized deposit transactions and settlements involving tokenized money market funds, according to crypto.news. Standard Chartered is working with Fireblocks to connect the service to digital asset clients, and HashKey has joined. Neither report gives transaction values or the number of institutions with access at launch.

CoinDesk says the launch coincides with the HKMA's expansion of EnsembleTX to 24-hour settlement in tokenized central bank money, and that the platform, which began as a pilot in November 2025, now counts 12 banks and 20 other firms. JPMorgan, Citi and other large banks are developing blockchain payment systems of their own, CoinDesk notes.