Chainlink Bridges Hong Kong and Australia with CBDC–Stablecoin Swap Tech

Hong Kong’s digital yuan just shook hands with Australia’s stablecoins—no bankers required. Chainlink’s cross-chain oracle tech cuts through the red tape, letting CBDCs and private stablecoins trade like rivals at a poker table.

Why it matters: Two financial hubs just bypassed the SWIFT-era middlemen. The experiment proves blockchain interoperability isn’t just crypto bro hype—it’s the quiet revolution central banks pretend to ignore while racing to adopt.

The cynical take: Watch traditional finance ‘discover’ this innovation in 3…2…1… right after they finish lobbying against it. Cross-border payments haven’t been this tense since someone realized gold bars don’t fit in emails.

How The Transaction Works

This is how the two banks behind the Hong Kong CBDC and Australian Stablecoin:

• An investor who is an ANZ customer in Australia requests to purchase a Hong Kong MMF using their deposits at ANZ.
• Using investors’ deposits, ANZ conducts a foreign exchange transaction of AUD to HKD internally.
• ANZ calls the VTAP APIs to request the minting of an equivalent amount of tokenized HKD deposits.
• VTAP mints tokenized HKD deposits to the Investor’s wallet on Ethereum Sepolia.

“We are extremely excited about the future of tokenization for payments,” a representative from Visa crypto said in a statement. “Visa’s long-term collaboration with the HKMA and our partners for two consecutive years has provided us with many valuable insights around tokenization technology and new business flows. We are excited to work with our partner banks to bring to life real-world applications of tokenization to the region.

According to Visa, in the next stage of the pilot, the Pilot Participants will continue executing end-to-end testing of transactions, which will provide insights into how tokenization can reduce settlement-related counterparty risk. Industry analysts say these pilots may serve as a blueprint for broader adoption of CBDCs and stablecoins in the future. While questions around regulatory frameworks, consumer protections, and system resilience remain amongst several nations and companies, the technical feasibility of stablecoins is becoming clearer.

LINK, Chainlink’s native cryptocurrency, responded positively to the development, climbing 2% on Monday morning.