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Covid-19 spurs Hong Kong’s rush to dump notes and coins as Faster Payment System tops 10 million registrations in city’s embrace of digital banking

  • Faster Payment System (FPS) reached 10.1 million registrations in March
  • The pandemic has accelerated digitisation, CEO of virtual bank Livi says

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FPS gained about 6 million new registrations over a period of two years that coincided with Hong Kong’s worst outbreaks of the coronavirus. Photo: AFP
Enoch Yiu
Registrations for a digital payments system developed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have crossed the 10 million milestone for the first time since its launch in September 2018, suggesting that the coronavirus pandemic has hastened the city’s shift to digital banking services.
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Faster Payment System (FPS), which was developed by the HKMA, the city’s de facto central bank, for people to transfer money online between different banks, reached 10.1 million registrations last month. The system allows users to have more than one account.
“In a short period of some three years since its launch, the number of total registrations has exceeded 10 million, setting a new milestone in its development,” Eddie Yue Wai-man, the HKMA’s CEO, said on Tuesday. “The usage of FPS will further expand going forward, bringing the development of retail payments in Hong Kong to new heights.”

HKMA has been promoting smart and digital banking services since 2017, to save costs for both customers and banks and to improve banking services. Covid-19, which forced people to work from home and many bank branches to close, has inadvertently given its digital push a big boost – FPS gained about 6 million new registrations over a period of two years that coincided with Hong Kong’s worst outbreaks of the coronavirus.

The number of registrations last month was 30 per cent higher than March 2021’s 7.7 million registrations and more than double of the 4 million registrations recorded in January 2020, when the pandemic first hit the city. Before the pandemic started, FPS registrations were growing at a slower pace, with 2 million new registrations in 2019.

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The daily average number of FPS transactions in March, when Hong Kong was gripped by the fifth wave and more than 600 out of a total of 1,100 bank branches in the city were closed, stood at 831,000 and funds worth HK$6.3 billion (US$803.4 million) were transferred.

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