Hong Kong's central bank is inviting interested parties to submit applications for Phase 2 of its e-HKD CBDC pilot programme.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) completed Phase 1 of the e-HKD Pilot Programme in October 2023 where it studied domestic retail use cases in various areas such as programmable payments, settlement of tokenised assets, and offline payments.
The next phase will delve deeper into select pilots from Phase 1 where an e-HKD could add unique value, namely programmability, tokenisation and atomic settlement, as well as explore new use cases that have not been covered in the previous phase.
An enhanced e-HKD sandbox will support Phase 2 for rapid prototyping, development and testing of use cases by pilot participants. The new sandbox will be built on the research conducted for 'Project Ensemble', a new wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) that will focus on tokenised deposits issued by commercial banks and made available to the general public.
Organisations interested in participating in Phase 2 of the e-HKD Pilot Programme are invted to submit their applications on or before 17 May 2024.