Ever since the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) dished out 8 virtual banking licenses much of Asia and perhaps even the world has been watching the space with great interest.

Most of the players, including WeLab were aiming to launch their services by the end of 2019 however with the prolonged protest continuing well into December — many of the new licensed virtual bank delayed their launch to 2020.

Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive of HKMA announced on Wednesday that the first virtual bank has already started their trial run within HKMA’s Fintech Supervisory Sandbox. This announcement follows hints from Arthur that some of the virtual banks will soft-launch some of their services before the year ends.

With this ZA Bank becomes the first virtual bank to kick off services in Hong Kong. The newly launched virtual bank said it will be allowing a select group of 2,000 users to try its services which include — remote account opening, multi-currency savings account, time deposits, local transfers, and e-statements.