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According to Zhitong Finance, on September 23, the President of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Eddie Yue, stated in a speech at the Treasury Markets Summit that Hong Kong's stock, currency, and bond markets have matured, and digital finance is rapidly emerging.The Centralized Debt Instruments Settlement System (CMU) will launch new services by the end of this year, providing on-chain 24-hour real-time settlement, supporting digital Hong Kong dollars and central bank digital currencies (CBDC), and will also explore the acceptance of tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins for settlement on the platform.

The President of the New York Federal Reserve, John Williams, stated that the process of transitioning U.S. Treasury securities and their repurchase agreements to centralized clearing has advanced ahead of schedule.The industry has expanded its clearing infrastructure, with trading activities shifting from non-cleared markets to cleared markets. The Federal Reserve's framework for maintaining ample bank reserves has proven effective and is committed to maintaining its resilience.

According to The Block, SoFi has begun using SoFiUSD to settle debit and credit card transactions on the Mastercard network and plans to migrate the entire card program to blockchain settlement, with an expected annual processing volume exceeding $25 billion.SoFi claims to be the first bank to launch stablecoin settlement on the Mastercard network.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) has launched the first 24-hour Korean won settlement network pilot, aimed at allowing foreign investors to settle won transactions outside of normal banking hours in South Korea. The central bank announced on Monday that its international wire transfer network has begun trial operations with four domestic banks: KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank, Hana Bank, and Shinhan Bank. Full operations are expected to start in January 2027, at which point participation will expand to other institutions and foreign banks.The network operates 24 hours a day on weekdays, excluding weekends and public holidays. Foreign investors can settle won transactions during their domestic business hours by registering a Foreign Institution (RFI-K) account for won services, without the need to open an account directly with a South Korean financial institution. The Bank of Korea stated that the network is expected to enhance the international status of the won by improving foreign investors' access to won settlement infrastructure.In addition, the Bank of Korea is also experimenting with tokenized settlement infrastructure through the Agorá project led by the Bank for International Settlements, which completed a cross-border payment trial using tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits, including the won, in July. The Bank of Korea is simultaneously advancing the Hangang project, a blockchain-based pilot that utilizes wholesale central bank digital currency to settle tokenized commercial bank deposits.

AI Agent Economic Settlement Agreement AEON announced the integration with two major mobile payment platforms in Pakistan, Easypaisa and JazzCash, allowing users to make payments using cryptocurrency, while merchants complete local fiat settlements in Pakistani Rupees (PKR).Currently, AEON has processed amounts exceeding 500 million and continues to expand its local payment network, providing infrastructure support for AI Agent to autonomously complete payments and settlements in more real-world business scenarios globally.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government released the 2026 Policy Address, further expanding the application of digital assets in traditional financial markets. The Securities and Futures Commission will improve the virtual asset licensing system and the regulatory framework for tokenized investment products, promoting the issuance and trading of gold and other suitable real-world assets on licensed platforms.Hong Kong also plans to normalize the issuance of digital bonds and explore the full lifecycle applications of digital currency for settlement, dividend distribution, and redemption. The Monetary Authority will test the tokenization operation of over HKD 1.3 trillion in foreign exchange fund notes by the end of the year and plans to achieve CBDC settlement and 24/7 operation of EnsembleTX by the end of the year.

According to a report by Decrypt, a new report released by the Bank for International Settlements shows that advanced AI technology has shortened the time window for banks to fix vulnerabilities before attackers exploit software flaws. It warns that periodic security assessments and scheduled patch updates have increasingly become insufficient to meet the challenges, with the time window from vulnerability discovery to exploitation reduced from weeks to minutes.The report focuses on the banks' response capabilities, arguing that financial institutions must accelerate the speed of software fixes and expedite the related authorization decision-making processes.

The Central Bank of Russia and the Reserve Bank of India are collaborating to establish a mechanism for settling bilateral trade using digital currencies to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments. Russia has launched the digital ruble, and India's digital currency is also used for government projects.Both parties will discuss digital currency trade settlement with BRICS countries at the summit in New Delhi.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) launched the Demat 2 pilot this week, issuing corporate bonds in the form of digital tokens on a distributed ledger operated by regulated market institutions, and settling through the wholesale digital rupee of the Reserve Bank of India. The size of India's corporate bond market is approximately $620 billion.The state-owned power financing institution REC raised ₹50 billion (approximately $56 million) through this system, engineering and construction giant Larsen & Toubro refinanced ₹50 billion, and non-banking financial institution IIFL Finance raised ₹2.5 billion (approximately $2.8 million), totaling around ₹102.5 billion. The bonds retain fixed interest rates, maturity dates, and investor rights, but the tokenized bonds can be settled simultaneously with the digital rupees used for purchase, thereby reducing transaction risk.Subsequent phases will introduce smart contracts to handle corporate actions such as interest payments and redemptions, and there are plans to open secondary market trading, ultimately allowing retail investors to participate. India maintains a cautious attitude towards private cryptocurrencies, and this pilot is an attempt to introduce tokenization into its controlled financial system.

The Kremlin stated that Russia will discuss trade settlements using digital currencies with BRICS+ partners at the summit in India.

According to Visa, its stablecoin annual settlement volume has exceeded 20 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of more than 15 times. In the second quarter, the Visa network has launched over 160 stablecoin-linked card projects, with related payment amounts increasing nearly 200% year-on-year, indicating that stablecoins are accelerating their entry into card payment and settlement scenarios.Visa is collaborating with Credit Coop to provide revolving credit lines denominated in stablecoins for early stablecoin-linked card programs, used for daily Visa settlement funds. Credit Coop locks accounts receivable through Spigot smart contracts, automates repayments, and combines Visa's daily settlement data for credit and risk control, having executed over 9,000 repayments on-chain, with cumulative financing exceeding 2.5 billion USD and zero defaults. Card projects such as Rain, Karta, Moto, and Xplace have all obtained settlement turnover funds through this model, establishing credit records for subsequent large institutional financing.

The official listing account of Kraken announced that TCS will soon be launched. TCS Blockchain is a blockchain-as-a-service platform aimed at the transportation industry, using ERC-20 tokens on Polygon to settle freight invoices without the need for traditional factoring intermediaries. The token trading will begin on September 9.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released Working Paper 1374, proposing a technical solution based on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to verify the source and integrity of official statistical data. This solution generates cryptographic fingerprints for SDMX datasets and records the hash values of batch data on the XRPL, while the original data itself is not stored on the chain.Users can verify the identity of data publishers and whether the data has been tampered with through digital signature credentials combined with a one-time on-chain query. Prototype testing results show that data publication takes about 3 to 5 seconds, while the verification process only takes about 1 to 2 seconds. The paper specifically notes that this system is currently only in the proof-of-concept stage and has not yet been put into a formal production environment.

AI Economic Settlement Agreement AEON announces the launch of Agentic Checkout, supporting AI Agents to complete product search, selection, checkout, and payment through natural language dialogue in the Shopify open merchant ecosystem. The payment process is supported by the AEON AI Card, a virtual card that can set predefined spending limits and authorization scopes, allowing AI agents to complete payments without directly accessing the user's main wallet or main card.AEON Agentic Checkout currently covers over 3 million active stores on Shopify and more than 1 billion products, and will later integrate with the Claude open-source e-commerce agent, expanding to shopping and payment scenarios such as Amazon and Travala.

SWIFT service provider Bottomline announced a collaboration with the blockchain infrastructure project Chainlink to enable over 600 bank clients in its network to access blockchain-based cross-border settlements. Bottomline processes over $16 trillion in payments annually and serves 1,200 financial institutions and 10,000 enterprises.Through this integration, banks can continue to use the ISO 20022 standard to send payment instructions, with Chainlink's infrastructure connecting the instructions to blockchain settlements. Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) supports the transfer of tokenized value across different blockchain networks, while Chainlink's Runtime Environment (CRE) is responsible for payment processes, transaction routing, and operational change coordination.CCIP has been recording mainnet activity since July 2023 and is currently connected to over 60 blockchain networks. Chainlink's Project Pangea has covered more than 50 banking institutions in Europe and South Korea, with participants managing assets totaling over $10 trillion, and the project's goals include achieving T+0 settlement for foreign exchange transactions.