China to Expand CBDC Trial to Most Populous Provinces

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), China’s central bank (CBDC) will expand the experiment of its e-CNY digital money to four major regions, including Guangdong, the most populous. Deputy Governor Fan Yifei announced at a financial conference on Monday that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) would also involve Jiangsu, Hebei, and Sichuan in the experiment. According to Yifei, there is no specific timeline for the expansion. It would occur at the right moment. Lottery-Style Events Over the past two years, trials of the nation’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) have been conducted. They have often been lottery-style events that are city-wide and give out relatively small sums of money to a greater number of participants. To promote acceptance, merchants were also urged to accept payments in e-CNY. Approximately 140 million users had opened e-CNY wallets as of October last year, and transactions worth 62 billion yuan had been made. Desire to Investigate CBDC In almost every significant economy in the world, the central banks and governments have expressed a desire to investigate the creation of a CBDC, partially in reaction to the surge in the usage of cryptocurrencies. Plans from Sweden and South Korea have also just entered a testing phase, but China is by far the most advanced. e-CNY Wallet For Subway Fares Last month, the organization in charge of operating the subway system in the city of Ningbo in the provi...