JD.com, the massive Chinese e-commerce company, is already part of Hong Kong’s stablecoin sandbox via its subsidiary JINGDONG Coinlink Technology. The city has just passed stablecoin legislation. Now the company’s Chairman, Richard Liu, has said it plans to apply for a stablecoin license in all major currency jurisdictions.

Initially it wants to use the stablecoins for B2B payments, but eventually potentially for consumers. However, we’d observe that for mainland users that will be up to regulators. Today stablecoins are not supported within China, but it appears to be using Hong Kong as a testing ground. Liu emphasized the efficiency benefits of this approach.

“We can reduce the global cross border payment cost by 90% and then improve the efficiency to within ten seconds,” said the CEO. He pointed to payments via Swift taking two to four days, but as we’ve observed many times, the delays are invariably with banks, not Swift. Nonetheless, if the intermediaries are removed that will make matters quicker.

“I hope one day when I shop around the world I can use JD’s local currency for global payments,” Mr Liu said.

JD.com isn’t alone in pursuing stablecoin opportunities. Last week Singapore’s Ant International, the owner of Alipay+, and mainland Ant Digital both announced plans to launch stablecoins. Plus, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that other e-commerce giants Amazon and Walmart are exploring the issuance of stablecoins.

This is all driven by regulatory momentum. The GENIUS Act for stablecoins that was passed by the US Senate yesterday, allows for these large firms to issue stablecoins. But they’d have to receive approval from a committee comprising the Chairs of the Federal Reserve and FDIC, and the Secretary of the Treasury. However, the GENIUS Act still has some hurdles to pass before becoming law.