The digital yuan expands its reach further as the Winter Olympic approaches.
Meituan will now allow users to pay for offline services with digital yuan. The company is the latest technology company to help the expansion of digital currency. Users will be able to link their digital wallet to the Meituan App and pay for services like hotels, car rentals, and tickets.
As of September 30, 2021, Meituan had 667.5 million annual transacting users. Meituan also recorded a 37.9% increase in revenue in Q3 2021, CNY 48.8 billion, for the same period of 2020.
"For the third quarter of 2021, we further enabled our small and medium merchants and supply chain partners to improve their digital and online operations, whilst also providing consumers with convenient, high-quality, and value-for-money goods and services. We continued to achieve healthy growth in annual transacting users and annual active merchants," said Meituan Founder and CEO Xing Wang.
By the end of 2021, the number of digital yuan users increased to 261 million. However, WeChat Pay and Alipay still dominates China's mobile payment market, each with significant more users than digital yuan. Meituan is now offering subsidies to those who sign up for digital yuan via Meituan.
Digital yuan will look to expand its reach during the Winter Olympics, during which the digital currency will be made available to foreign athletes. China may have the first mover advantage in state-issued currency if the digital yuan is more widely adopted in the future.