Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System Exceeds 10M Registrations

There are now more than 10 million users registered for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA’s) Faster Payment System (FPS), the digital platform that launched in September 2018, according to a South China Morning Post report Tuesday (April 19).

FPS allows users to transfer money online between different banks. Some of the 10.1 million accounts are held by people with multiple profiles on the platform, the report said.

“In a short period of some three years since its launch, the number of total registrations has exceeded 10 million, setting a new milestone in its development,” Eddie Yue Wai-man, the HKMA’s CEO, said in the report. “The usage of FPS will further expand going forward, bringing the development of retail payments in Hong Kong to new heights.”

Although the HKMA has been promoting digital banking services since 2017 as a cost-saver for banks and their customers and as a way to improve services, the FPS registrations have surged in the past couple of years thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, with 6 million registrations in that time.

The daily average number of FPS transactions in March 2022, when the fifth COVID wave closed 600 of the city’s 1,100 bank branches, was 831,000, representing the transfer of HK$6.3 billion ($803.4 million), up from HK$5.2 billion in September and HK$2.4 billion in early 2020.

In January, the HKMA said payments-related stablecoins are the biggest threat to the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies in its “Discussion Paper on Crypto-assets and Stablecoins.”

Related: Hong Kong Monetary Authority Calls Stablecoins Crypto’s Greatest Threat

While the report was aimed at soliciting input from crypto, banking and other finance industry stakeholders on crypto-related regulatory issues, the HKMA pointed to payment-focused stablecoins as one of the two items at the top of its list, along with how authorized institutions — banks that accept deposits — provide crypto asset-related services to customers.

The authority said it believes that some stablecoins have a high “possibility of becoming a widely accepted means of payments, i.e. ‘payment-related stablecoins,’ thus raising broader monetary and financial implications,” adding it “sees the need to ensure that payment-related stablecoins are appropriately regulated before they operate in Hong Kong or are marketed to the public of Hong Kong.”