Bank of China: e-CNY Transactions Volume Exceeded $14 Billion
With Hong Kong, the world’s biggest CBDC pilot will extend its citizen payments and cross-border activities.
During its experimental phase, China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) programme surpassed 100.04 billion yuan (about $14 billion) in transactions. It makes the e-CNY, the digital yuan, the most extensively used CBDC in the world.
As stated by the Bank of China on its official WeChat page on October 10, 360 million transactions had been completed in 15 provinces inside the CBDC trial framework by the end of summer. According to the report, over 5,6 million merchant outlets currently accept the digital yuan as legal money.
The pilot is expanding to include more governmental entities and a vast array of citizen payments:
“Multiple e-government service platforms have opened digital renminbi payment services, supporting online and offline channels to handle various public utility payments, using digital renminbi to issue tax rebate funds, special funds for monthly medical insurance payment, funds for helping people in need, and ‘specialised, special and new’ enterprise support funds, etc.”
The financial regulator revealed its plans for the development of the project, which include launching cross-border payments between Hong Kong and mainland China, actively exploring the multilateral cross-border option in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlement, and adhering to the principle of “anonymity for small amounts and traceability for large amounts” to protect the users’ personal information.
However, there is a catch: China accounts for 84% of all blockchain patent applications.
With the commencement of its first CBDC experiments in April 2020, the People’s Bank of China intends to ultimately replace currency with the digital yuan. In September 2022, it announced intentions to extend the e-deployment CNY’s to four provinces, including Guangdong (earlier, the pilot ran only in separate cities).
Intriguingly, the Bank of China recorded around $13 billion (87.5 billion yuan) in transactions by January 2022; with the most recent update, this might imply that the total amount of new transactions in the previous seven months did not surpass $1 billion.
