China to Expand Digital Yuan Pilot Project in Four Major Provinces
The Central Bank of China plans to expand the coverage of the digital yuan pilot project area in four regions of the country. A senior official of the bank announced the move while highlighting that the People’s Bank has been stepping up its digitalization efforts this year.
Expansion of Digital Yuan Coverage
The
Chinese government is looking at expanding the digital yuan into four pilot
cities in the project area. These are Shenzhen in Southern Guangdong Province,
Suzhou in Eastern Jiangsu Province, Xiongan New Area in North Hebei Province,
and Chengdu in the Sichuan Province of Southwest China.
With
the expansion into province-wide testing, the government in Beijing hopes to
"continue to push the innovation of China’s digital yuan," the
English-language newspaper Global Times reported.
The
plan was announced by Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Fan Yifei
during an economic forum this week. The top official said that the monetary
policy regulator has been accelerating financial digitalization since the
beginning of this year. He further noted that the government has outlined the
development of financial technology till 2025.
Fan
also underscored the importance of securing key technologies to enhance the
financial system and build an infrastructure that can adapt to the development
and transformation of the digital economy in China.
The
PBOC executive pointed out that the digital yuan has been implemented across
multiple economic sectors, including retail and wholesale, catering, leisure,
tourism, and government payments, via both online and offline channels. He
insisted that the utility of the digital yuan in the first four pilot cities
should be expanded to the provincial level.
Fan
Yifei’s statements urged for the widening
of the array of use-case scenarios for Central Bank Digital Currency
(CBDC). He also called for improving the integration between the digital yuan
system and traditional tools for electronic payments to increase convenience
for users of the e-CNY platform.
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