A top official from The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has provided an update on the latest trial of the Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC) during a webinar arranged by the Atlantic Council Tuesday. The digital yuan, or e-CNY, is currently being tested at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Reuters reported.
Two million yuan worth of payments is being done using CBDC at the Winter Olympics each day.
According to Mu Changchun, director-general of the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute, the Chinese CBDC is being used to make 2 million yuan ($315,000) or more in payments each day at the Winter Olympics. While admitting, “I have a rough idea that (there are) several, or a couple of million RMB (yuan) of payments every day, but I don’t have exact numbers yet,” Mu said. “It seems all the foreign users are using hardware wallets … The software wallets are mainly used by domestic users,” he added.
The digital yuan is being tested in various cities across China.
Besides the Winter Olympics, the digital yuan is being tested in various cities across the Asian nation, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xian, Qingdao, and Dalian. As reported earlier in January, the PBOC made its digital yuan app available in the Android and iOS app stores in trial regions. The PBOC then revealed that the digital yuan had 261 million unique users at the end of 2021, and transactions worth 87.5 billion yuan ($13.78 billion) had been made using the Chinese central bank digital currency. In addition, more than 8 million merchants now accept the digital yuan.
