Hong Kong to see launch of multicurrency e-wallets for cross-border payments on Thursday, HKD stablecoin to follow
- RD Wallet Technologies will allow companies to open online accounts and conduct foreign-currency conversions and cross-border payments in five major currencies
- The firm’s parent company plans launch of a Hong Kong dollar-pegged stablecoin in coming months
RD Wallet Technologies, a fintech company founded by Hong Kong’s former central banker Norman Chan Tak-lam, will launch a digital wallet on Thursday, that will allow companies to make cross-border digital payments in five major currencies.
“Hong Kong is an international financial centre, and we need to seek new technological routes for making payments and to make trading more secure and more efficient,” he said at a media briefing on Wednesday.
Chan set up RD Technologies in 2020 and secured a stored-value facility licence for RD Wallet in December last year. After six weeks of trials with more than 150 companies in March and April, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) gave the green light for the digital wallet to become fully operational.
The projects follow Chan’s pioneering work in the fintech space during his tenure as CEO of HKMA between 2009 and 2019. In 2017, he introduced seven measures to promote fintech in Hong Kong, including the launch of the online remittance network Faster Payment System or FPS and approved the launch of eight virtual banks.