Anchorpoint leaves retail stablecoin launch date open after HSBC

By Daniel Okafor

Anchorpoint CEO Dominic Maffei declined on Friday to reaffirm an end-2026 retail launch for the Standard Chartered-backed venture’s Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin, saying it would take a “prudent approach” before serving consumers.

His comments, delivered at a Friday press conference and reported by the South China Morning Post, followed HSBC’s launch of its own Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin, RedCoin, for the 3.3 million users of PayMe. The contrast leaves Anchorpoint with an institutional product and no confirmed retail date, while HSBC has begun consumer distribution.

Maffei said: “We believe it’s important to build the market out in a long-term, sustainable manner.” He added that rushing a launch “does not make sense.” His remarks turn the earlier end-2026 indication into an unconfirmed target; he announced neither a replacement date nor a formal withdrawal.

Anchorpoint released its institutional stablecoin product in August. Before Maffei’s comments, the venture had said retail access could arrive as early as the end of 2026. The distinction matters operationally: Anchorpoint can serve its current institutional use case, but it has not set a timetable for adding consumers to the Hong Kong dollar token.

Who is behind Anchorpoint?

Anchorpoint is the joint venture of Standard Chartered and Animoca Brands. It grew out of a partnership between those companies and telecommunications provider HKT, announced in February 2025, after their joint participation in Hong Kong’s stablecoin issuer sandbox in July 2024.

Animoca Brands’ assigned role covers blockchain expertise, its industry network and developing uses for the stablecoin across the Web3 ecosystem. That remit puts product development and network access around Anchorpoint’s institutional release; the retail rollout remains a separate execution decision for the venture.

What changed in the timeline?

• July 2024: Standard Chartered, Animoca Brands and HKT jointly participated in Hong Kong’s stablecoin issuer sandbox.
• February 2025: The three companies announced their partnership that became Anchorpoint.
• August: Anchorpoint released its institutional stablecoin product.
• Friday: HSBC launched RedCoin for PayMe’s 3.3 million users; Maffei declined to reaffirm Anchorpoint’s retail window.
• End-2026: The earliest retail timing Anchorpoint had previously indicated, not confirmed at Friday’s press conference.

How does HSBC change the retail contest?

On the information reported, the immediate change is distribution, not merely another issuer entering the market. HSBC paired RedCoin with PayMe’s 3.3-million-user base and launched the token on Friday. Anchorpoint, by contrast, has deferred public confirmation of a consumer timetable.

For retail customers, the two projects now have different execution statuses: HSBC’s token is live in a payment app with 3.3 million users, while Anchorpoint’s consumer route remains unspecified. The timing gives HSBC a visible deployment advantage, though the report does not compare adoption, fees, safeguards or RedCoin’s technical design.

Any assessment of market share would therefore require customer-use and transaction data not provided in the report. Separately, HashKey has begun beta distribution of a Hong Kong-regulated HKDAP stablecoin, adding another Hong Kong distribution channel. That development does not set Anchorpoint’s schedule.

Anchorpoint’s next public decision point is whether to turn end-2026 into a firm retail launch plan. Until then, HSBC’s PayMe rollout is the clearer consumer-market deployment, and Anchorpoint’s institutional release remains its only confirmed product launch.