Ant International plans to apply for a Hong Kong stablecoin license to promote cross-border payments and global financial layout
Reprinted from chaincatcher
06/12/2025·4DAuthor: TechFlow
On June 12, according to Bloomberg, Ant International will submit a stablecoin issuance license application to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority as soon as possible after the "Stablecoin Ordinance" comes into effect in August. The license will be used for cross-border payments and global treasury management business. At the same time, according to the Hong Kong News Agency, Ant International responded: Welcome the Hong Kong Legislative Council to pass the "Stablecoin Bill". The company will submit an application after the bill takes effect on August 1 and the relevant channels are opened, hoping to contribute more to the construction of a future international financial center in Hong Kong. Ant International is accelerating investment and expanding cooperation in global asset management, and investing its AI, blockchain and stablecoin innovation in real and reliable large-scale applications.
Stablecoins are special crypto assets linked to fiat currency and regulated. They have high transparency and can reduce costs and improve efficiency for cross-border finance. They have developed rapidly in recent years. In recent years, Hong Kong has actively developed the WEB3.0 financial center and has adopted stablecoins pegged to the Hong Kong dollar as an important part of future financial infrastructure. At the end of May, the Legislative Council passed the Hong Kong Stablecoin Bill, which incorporates the issuance of stablecoins pegged to the Hong Kong dollar and other fiat currencies into regulation, aiming to improve the regulatory framework for virtual asset activities in Hong Kong to maintain financial stability and promote financial innovation.
(Ant International took the lead in joining the "Ensemble" liquidity management sandbox project of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in 2024, and its Whale platform and its partners achieved multiple breakthroughs in October of that year)
At present, Ant International's main benchmark companies such as Stripe, Paypal in the United States, card organizations Visa, MasterCard, etc. have actively intervened in the US stablecoin issuance system. Ant International is the first global financial technology company to clearly state that it will take the lead in submitting the Hong Kong government's stablecoin issuance license application and has experience in large-scale fund management.
Ant International has used blockchain to manage **300 billion US
dollars of** global funds
As the parent company of Alipay, Ant Group regards internationalization as its core development strategy. Ant International focuses on serving cross-border financial services of enterprises and institutions overseas and opens up a cross-border payment cooperation platform. In 2024, Ant Group was reorganized, and Ant International began to "establish its own portal", forming four core business segments including cross-border wallet payment and digital solutions (Alipay+), cross-border enterprise account services (WorldFirst), global merchant payment services (Antom) and scenario financial services (EmFi). Bloomberg previously reported that Ant International's revenue in 2024 exceeded US$3 billion, has been profitable for two consecutive years, and has plans to consider listing in Hong Kong.
According to reports, Ant International's global treasury technology service department manages its own and customer capital flows in more than 100 currencies of its four core businesses, offline digital payments covering more than 70 markets around the world, online e-commerce payments in more than 100 currencies, global account operations of 1.2 million global small and medium-sized enterprises, and treasury flow management between millions of enterprises and banks in various countries, involving own and customer capital flows in more than 100 currencies.
In competing with international giants, Ant International has developed two core fund management technology products: blockchain real-time cross-border funding platform Whale (Whale) and AI foreign exchange model Falcon (Falcon). According to Bloomberg, Ant International's annual fund processing volume exceeded US$1 trillion in 2024, and Ant previously revealed that more than one-third of the fund processing volume in 2024 will be processed using blockchain technology through the Whale platform. According to this calculation, more than US$300 billion of funds will be managed by Ant International blockchain technology in 2024. If half of them can be implemented in stablecoin applications, that is, the stablecoin transaction volume in its own stock business can reach more than US$150 billion.
Deeply participate in the government sandbox plan to take
important anchor points for Hong Kong 's overseas trip
It is reported that Ant International also plans to apply for a stablecoin-related license from local regulatory authorities in Luxembourg and Singapore, but Hong Kong has always been the focus of Ant International's global layout. At the 2024 Hong Kong FinTech Week, Ant Group and Chairman of Ant International, Jing Xiandong, said, "I hope Ant can contribute to Hong Kong's establishment of a global leading tokenization and Web3 FinTech Center."
As early as May 2023, Ant Group became the first participants to support the "Digital Hong Kong Dollar" pilot program of the HKMA, and the Hong Kong version of "Alipay" AlipayHK participated in the pilot.
In 2024, the Whale platform participated in the "Ensemble Project" liquidity management sandbox of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and achieved two breakthroughs in October: it completed the first Hong Kong dollar interbank blockchain test transaction with HSBC, and real-time cross-bank transfers around the clock to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs; and Standard Chartered Bank successfully achieved internal transactions of Hong Kong dollar-denominated enterprises for the first time, realizing application between the real business environment and the banking system. In May 2025, Ant International cooperated with HSBC again to launch the "tokenized deposit service" of Hong Kong banks' first blockchain settlement solution, and customers can use corporate wallets to make payments in real time for Hong Kong dollars and US dollars.
Ant International has diversified its layout in major global markets and is also an early participant in the relevant financial innovation sandbox pilot of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In November 2023, Ant International participated in the Project Guardian project of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, exploring the construction of open and interoperable digital asset trading platforms and liquidity tools based on public chains.
In addition to local Hong Kong banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, since 2023, Ant International has also reached cooperation with global and regional systemically important banks such as Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, OCBC, DBS Bank, and BNP Paribas. In this regard, Li Yue, general manager of Ant International Platform Technology, clearly positioned his business as "building a technological bridge for the financial service industry." The extensive cooperation between large institutions also shows the industry's recognition of its technical security, reliability and compliance.
"Hong Kong has become an international financial center not because of the numerous appearances of Central Bank. In the final analysis, it is recognized by all industries around the world that Hong Kong's treasury management is flexible and efficient, with low transaction costs, which is suitable for the actual transaction needs of all industries, and is supported by traditional financial institutions such as high security and multi-level banks." Xiao Geng, member of the expert group of the Chief Executive's Policy Group of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and chairman of the Hong Kong International Financial Association, said that through the development of the stablecoin platform through technology and ecological development and encouraging diversified and large-scale applications in real scenarios, it can promote multinational enterprises to choose Hong Kong as their treasury management center, which is of great significance to consolidating and enhancing the Hong Kong International Financial Center.
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