The Fintech Facilitation Office (FFO) of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), in collaboration with the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), will launch the “HKMA-ASTRI Fintech Innovation Hub” – a new facility to support research and adoption of fintech by the industry.

The HKMA said that the hub is intended to be a neutral ground of the fintech industry, a place where various stakeholders can collaborate to innovate. Industry participants can get together at this facility to brainstorm innovative ideas, try out and evaluate new fintech solutions, conduct proof-of-concept trials, and gain an early understanding of the general applicability of creative solutions for banking and payment services.

Located at ASTRI’s office within the Hong Kong Science Park, the HKMA said that the hub can be useful for supporting various kinds of activities. This includes testing solutions which require participation of multi-parties, such as fintech solutions that try to utilise the blockchain or distributed ledger technology in supporting cross-banks financial services. In addition, the hub would support activities such as:

• Demonstrating fintech solutions which require substantial computing resources.
   
• Holding dialogues between the industry and the HKMA on emerging technologies.
   
• Testing solutions that may be adopted by the HKMA.
   
• Organising training sessions for the industry.

“We believe that, with such facility to support the exploratory and experimentation stage of research and development work, industry-wide fintech solutions can be developed more timely and efficiently, and industry collaboration – a key to fintech success in Hong Kong – can be further fostered”, the HKMA said.

In a separate announcement, the FFO launched the Fintech Supervisory Sandbox scheme for banks. The HKMA said that the fintech innovation hub together with Sandbox scheme show its commitment to facilitate the healthy development of the fintech ecosystem in Hong Kong.