Hong Kong is expanding its financial collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, targeting tokenization and payments infrastructure agreements.
A bilateral meeting between the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) was held on July 26 to improve the integration of financial services between the two nations.
The HKMA and the SAMA covered topics such financial infrastructure development, open market operations, market connectivity, and sustainable growth as part of their agenda for the meeting.
The central banks also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to encourage conversations on financial innovation. According to a joint official notice, the governments of Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia also used the occasion to exchange knowledge in fields like tokenization, payment infrastructure, and supervisory technologies. HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue said:
“There is a lot of room for cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong in the fields of economy and trade, sustainable development, finance and fintech,”
According to SAMA governor Ayman Alsayari, the MoU would not only support the growth of the relationship between Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia in the present but will also benefit them “in the future.”
Although the HKMA recently enabled retail investors to trade cryptocurrencies, the announcement does not mention whether the development would involve collaborative activities, including digital currencies like Bitcoin (BTC).
On the other hand, the Saudi Arabian government hasn’t publicly stated any plans to promote cryptocurrencies in recent years, other than to warn that Bitcoin will “not be recognized by legal entities” there in 2019.
Hong Kong already takes part in several cross-jurisdictional tokenization projects. The BOCI investment bank unit of the Bank of China issued a $28 million tokenized asset in Hong Kong in the middle of June that was created on the Ethereum blockchain.
The initiative used the GS DAP tokenization technology from Goldman Sachs and currency tokens that represented claims against the Hong Kong dollar.