HSBC launches its HKD stablecoin RedCoin on PayMe, usable at more than 100,000 Hong Kong merchants

HSBC launched RedCoin (RCHKD), its first stablecoin and a Hong Kong dollar token, on 23 October 2026. It is issued by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation under one of the first stablecoin issuer licences granted by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in April 2026, and HSBC's own digital assets custody unit holds the reserves. RedCoin lives inside PayMe, HSBC's consumer payments app. More than 3.3 million PayMe users can access it from launch and activate a stablecoin wallet over the following days, with no separate crypto wallet needed. The first phase supports transfers between people and payments to merchants, which HSBC says covers more than 100,000 businesses that already accept PayMe. HSBC plans to add a wallet to its Hong Kong mobile banking app later this year, along with subscriptions to tokenised money market funds, and says wholesale and corporate uses will follow. This is one of the first cases of a major bank's regulated stablecoin being spendable at mainstream merchants from day one, through an app that shoppers already use. Merchants do not need a new integration to be reachable, because the payment flows through their existing PayMe acceptance. HSBC has not published fees, limits, or details of how merchant receipts settle. For online and in-store merchants in Hong Kong, the immediate effect is likely to be small, since PayMe is the front end either way. The longer-term significance is that a bank-issued token is now sitting on a live merchant network, which is the model other banks and regulators in Asia and Europe are watching.