HONG KONG - The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said on Thursday that it is collaborating with the Banque de France, or the Bank of France, to facilitate the interoperability between their wholesale central bank digital currency infrastructure.

The cooperation will highlight real-time cross-border and cross-currency payments to optimize settlement efficiency of cross-border transactions, the HKMA said.

Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the HKMA, said the HKMA looks forward to joining hands with the Bank of France to further explore different cross-border payment solutions and use cases, promote financial market connectivity and push forward the development of the global tokenization market

"As we have set the clear objective to improve cross-border payments, and we have the opportunity brought by the Eurosystem exploratory work to collaborate with the HKMA on different use cases for payment versus payment between the tokenized form of the Hong Kong dollar and the Euro," said Denis Beau, first deputy governor of the Bank of France.

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The HKMA looks forward to joining hands with the Bank of France to further explore different cross-border payment solutions and use cases, promote financial market connectivity and push forward the development of the global tokenization market, said Howard Lee, deputy chief executive of the HKMA.

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The two institutions recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding in the latest push to foster innovation in wholesale central bank digital currency and tokenization market.