Money flows through an economy like vehicles travelling on a highway: it must move smoothly, swiftly and without obstruction for the economy to work properly. A robust financial infrastructure is indispensable to the smooth circulation of money through the economy. The main components of a financial infrastructure include payment systems, settlement systems for securities transactions, as well as linkages among these systems and with similar systems in other jurisdictions.
An important role of the HKMA is to develop Hong Kong’s financial infrastructure that facilitates domestic and cross-border transfers of funds and securities. Over the years, continued effort and resources have been devoted to building a robust and efficient multi-currency, multi-dimensional platform, with extensive domestic and overseas system linkages.