Ripple joins Hong Kong CBDC pilot program and partners with Fubon Bank

Ripple Labs has launched a new central bank digital currency (CBDC) payment platform in Hong Kong. The San Francisco-based payment protocol and exchange network will partner with Fubon Bank, a Hong Kong subsidiary of Taiwan’s Fubon Financial Holding Co., as part of the city’s new e-HKD pilot program. The pilot program brings together various industry stakeholders to explore use cases and implementation issues for e-HKD. Ripple’s partnership with Fubon Bank will provide solutions for tokenizing real estate assets and issuing stocks using CBDCs.

In a press release on Thursday, Ripple announced that its new CBDC platform can facilitate central banks, governments, and financial institutions to issue their own CBDCs and manage the entire lifecycle of digital currencies, including transactions and distributions.

As part of the CBDC pilot program launched by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on the same day, Ripple said it will partner with Fubon Bank to test tokenization of real estate assets as a potential use case for e-HKD.

James Wallis, Vice President of Central Bank Business and CBDC at Ripple, said in a statement, “For Ripple, being one of the few organizations to participate in the HKMA e-HKD pilot program is a tremendous honor. We now have the opportunity to show how tokenizing real estate assets can bring value to Hong Kong citizens.”

He added that the fully integrated solution would be an “industry-first use case showcasing the power of using CBDCs for releasing real estate equity assets.”

Ripple said that through the program, commercial banks in Hong Kong will benefit from simplified loan services and more flexible payment methods.

The HKMA announced on Thursday that it will explore the use cases of e-HKD in six areas using this pilot program: comprehensive payments, programmable payments, offline payments, tokenized deposits, Web3 transaction settlement, and tokenized asset settlement.

A total of 16 banks, payment companies, and blockchain companies will participate in the pilot program to test these use cases, including state-owned Bankof China (BOC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), as well as HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Visa, Mastercard, and Ant Group’s Alipay.