More than 100 Billion Yuan in Digital Currency Spending

As the nation continues to roll out a central bank digital currency, China’s central bank said on Wednesday that transactions utilizing the digital yuan had exceeded 100B yuan ($13.9B) as of August 31.

The People’s Bank of China, also called PBOC reported this week that the expenditure encompassed 360M transactions in trial zones across 15 provinces and municipalities and that more than 5.6M businesses may now accept payments with digital currency. China is leading the race for central banks to create digital currencies, albeit adoption is still in its infancy. By the end of 2021, there were more transactions utilizing e-CNY than in 2017, based on the People’s Bank of China statement.

How Does Rising Digital Currency Use Impact China?

According to a report by the People’s Bank of China, about 30 pilot locations issued subsidies in the form of e-CNY to boost consumption, fight the Pandemic, and support low-carbon transportation.

The CB experimented with the local digital payment system in Hong Kong and participated in studying the Central Bank Digital Currency (mCBDC) bridge developed by the Bank for International Settlements. According to the bank, the e-CNY will be pushed for use in corporate and private business, finance, taxation, and governmental issues. The e-CNY use so far has been for domestic retail payments.

To make the e-CNY system easier for customers and businesses, it also promised to link it with the established digital payment system controlled by Tencent Holding’s WeChat Pay and Alipay from Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) Group.