As an international financial center, with a robust regulatory environment as well as rich business opportunities and capital support, Hong Kong is an ideal destination for the development of digital finance and Fintech. Currently, there are about 1 000 Fintech companies operating in Hong Kong. The scope of business covers mobile payment, cross-boundary wealth management, artificial intelligent financial consultancy, wealth and investment management, regulatory technology, etc., including eight virtual banks, four virtual insurers and two licensed virtual assets trading platforms.
The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau coordinates the policy for facilitating Fintech development, and assesses the needs of the Fintech sector and rooms for development through maintaining liaison with the industry and cooperating with the financial regulators, with a view to formulating the corresponding support measures.
Enhancing Financial Infrastructure
The Government is committed to promoting the development of electronic payment (“e-payment”) and providing the public with safe, efficient, convenient and diversified e-payment options by enhancing Fintech infrastructure and implementing a robust regulatory regime. Currently, major QR code e-wallets in the market could support the cross-boundary payment needs of both Mainland and Hong Kong users.
In December 2023, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (“HKMA”) and the Bank of Thailand launched the Faster Payment System (“FPS”) x PromptPay Link for cross-border QR payment, providing visitors with another safe, efficient and cost-effective retail payment means. The HKMA will consolidate experience and continue to explore the feasibility of developing cross-border payment services with other regions.
In October 2022, the HKMA launched the Commercial Data Interchange (“CDI”) which effectively facilitates enterprises (in particular small and medium enterprises) to share with banks their commercial data from different data sources, thereby enhancing their access to more financial services. Besides, the CDI was connected to the Government’s Consented Data Exchange Gateway in 2023 and the Companies Registry has become the first government data source of the CDI via the Gateway. The HKMA will endeavour to promote the diversification of data sources in the CDI in order to develop more business use cases.
In October 2023, the HKMA completed Phase 1 of the e-HKD Pilot Programme and studied domestic retail use cases in various areas such as programmable payments, offline payments and tokenised deposits. Phase 2 commenced in March 2024 and would further explore new use cases of e-HKD and delve deeper into the result of selected pilots from Phase 1.
In March 2024, the HKMA announced the commencement of Project Ensemble, a new wholesale central bank digital currency (“wCBDC”) project to support the development of the tokenisation market in Hong Kong. Project Ensemble seeks to explore innovative financial market infrastructure and facilitate interbank settlement of tokenised money through wCBDC.Building a More Active Fintech Ecosystem
Following the launch of the Fintech Proof-of-Concept Subsidy Schemes in 2021 and 2022, we rolled out the new “Green and Sustainable Fintech Proof-of-Concept Funding Support Scheme” in June 2024. The new scheme involves funding of HK$10 million and aims to provide early-stage funding support for green Fintech solutions to facilitate their commercialisation, thereby fostering the development of new Fintech initiatives.
Nurturing Fintech Talents
In September 2022, we launched the Pilot Scheme on Training Subsidy for Fintech Practitioners to provide practitioners who have successfully attained Fintech professional qualifications with tuition subsidy.
In October 2023, we launched the GBA Fintech Two-way Internship Scheme for Post-secondary Students to subsidise students from Hong Kong and the Mainland to participate in short-term internship in Fintech companies, with a view to enhancing talent exchange and enlarging the Fintech talent pool. The whole internship scheme will provide 150 internship positions with the participation of around 30 Fintech companies in Hong Kong and the Mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area.
Strengthening Cooperation with the Mainland and Overseas
Following the launch of the Guangdong-Hong Kong one-stop Fintech pilot testing platform by the People’s Bank of China (“PBoC”) and the HKMA in 2022, the PBoC, the HKMA and the Monetary Authority of Macao signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2023, with a view to further deepening Fintech innovation co-operation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and providing a one-stop platform to facilitate pilot testing of cross-boundary Fintech initiatives among the three regions.
In May 2024, the HKMA announced the further progress made with the PBoC in the e-CNY pilot for cross-boundary payments, to expand the scope of e-CNY pilot in Hong Kong to facilitate the set up and the use of e-CNY wallets by Hong Kong residents, as well as the top-up of e-CNY wallets through the FPS, providing convenient cross-boundary payment means for residents of both places.
The HKMA, together with other central banks, namely the Digital Currency Institute of the PBoC, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudi Central Bank, as well as the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, are conducting a project named Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge (“mBridge”). The mBridge project seeks to analyse the functions of the distributed ledger technology in facilitating conduct of real-time cross-border foreign exchange transactions in a multi-jurisdictional context and on a round-the-clock basis, as well as to explore the business use cases. In June 2024, the mBridge project reached the “Minimum Viable Product” Stage.
The Government issued a policy statement on the development of virtual assets (VA) in Hong Kong on 31 October 2022. The statement sets out the Government's policy stance and approach towards developing a vibrant sector and ecosystem for VA in Hong Kong. It explains in detail our vision and approach, regulatory regimes, thoughts on investors' exposures, our pilot projects to embrace the technological benefits and financial innovations brought by VA, and the way forward. Our policy stance on VA is now clearly communicated to the global markets and it serves to demonstrate our commitment and determination to explore financial innovations together with the global VA community. The Government is prepared to embrace the opportunities and challenges in the future, and we welcome the clustering of Fintech and VA community and talents in Hong Kong, and we will promote the sustainable development of financial services across the whole VA value chain.
For more information, please visit the following websites/linked documents:
Fintech HK - https://www.hongkong-fintech.hk/en/why-hong-kong/index.html
Hong Kong Monetary Authority -
https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-functions/international-financial-centre/fintech/
Insurance Authority -
https://www.ia.org.hk/en/aboutus/insurtech_corner.html