Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – China is secretly serious about working on its own digital money called Yuan Digital. The proof is that this digital money has been transacted over 1.1 billion yuan, or the equivalent of Rp 2.4 trillion in a pilot project.
Deputy Governor of China’s central bank Fan Yifei said 3.13 million transactions had been processed using Yuan Digital in trials in major Chinese cities such as Shenzhen and Xiongan over the past year. Pilots will also perform at the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2022.
Fan Yifei added that the digital money itself is used for bill payment transactions and transportation to government services.
“The PBOC considers the digital renminbi as an important financial infrastructure for the future,” said Fan Yifei at the Sibos Banking and Financial conference, as quoted by the South China Morning Post, Tuesday (13/10/2020).
Yuan digital is a development of Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC / EP) which will encourage the second largest economy in the world to be free of cash, allowing consumers and companies to pay for goods using digital wallets instead of traditional money.
The Yuan Digital trial involved 113,300 individual digital wallets and 8,800 corporate digital wallets. Yuan Digital is issued by the People Bank of China (PBoC) and is controlled by the central bank.
The concept is different from digital currency (cryptocurrency) like Bitcoin which uses a decentralized concept. China itself is taking a firm stance on cryptocurrency by banning its transactions across the country and Chinese citizens.
The use of cash in China continues to decrease. This is because the higher the use of digital wallets in transactions. Currently, digital retail transactions are controlled by the duopoly WeChat Pay (Tencent) and Alipay (Alibaba-affiliated Ant Group).
(roy/miq)
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