Liu Yingbin, senior assistant president of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on November 4th that the HKMA had been closely following the developments of the PBoC’s national digital currency. He said that while on the Mainland such electronic payments would be mainly used for retail payments, Hong Kong’s situation was different and that the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) studied by the HKMA would be mainly used for commercial cross-border payment purposes. In May 2019, the HKMA and the Bank of Thailand initiated Project Inthanon-LionRock to study the application of CBDC to cross-border payments. Meanwhile, Yi Gang, the PBoC’s governor, said the Chinese central bank was open to collaborating with other monetary authorities in establishing a legal framework for adopting and promoting the use of digital fiat currencies.