Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia collaborate on tokens and payments

Hong Kong is increasing its monetary collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, focusing on agreements associated to tokenization and funds infrastructure.

The Saudi Central Financial institution (SAMA) and the Hong Kong Financial Authority (HKMA) on July 26 held a bilateral assembly to strengthen the mixing of economic providers between the 2 international locations.

As a part of the assembly agenda, the HKMA and the SAMA mentioned initiatives akin to monetary infrastructure improvement, open market operations, market connectivity and sustainable improvement. The central banks additionally signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to advertise joint discussions on monetary innovation.

In response to an official joint announcement, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia’s authorities additionally took the chance to share their experience in areas like tokenization, fee infrastructure and supervision applied sciences.

“There’s lots of room for cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong within the fields of economic system and commerce, sustainable improvement, finance and fintech,” HKMA chief government Eddie Yue mentioned.

SAMA governor Ayman Alsayari famous that the MoU is not going to solely promote the continued improvement of the connection between Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, but additionally assist them “transfer in the direction of Sooner or later.”

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The announcement doesn’t specify whether or not the event would come with any joint efforts associated to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), regardless of HKMA just lately permitting retail traders to commerce crypto. However, the federal government of Saudi Arabia hasn’t been vocal on any plans to advertise crypto in recent times, solely warning that Bitcoin is “not acknowledged by authorized entities” within the nation in 2019.

The HKMA didn’t instantly reply to Cointelegraph’s request for remark.

Hong Kong is already taking part in a number of inter-jurisdictional tokenization initiatives. In mid-June, Financial institution of China’s funding financial institution subsidiary BOCI issued a $28 million tokenized safety in Hong Kong, minted on the Ethereum blockchain. The venture deployed Goldman Sachs’ tokenization protocol GS DAP and money tokens representing claims on the Hong Kong greenback.

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