China is using the Beijing Winter Olympics as a showcase for its official digital currency
Digital Currency Electronic Payment
A total of CNY 9.6 billion (USD 1.5 billion) worth of transactions have been settled with e-CNY, or China's official virtual currency, during the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics, a senior financial official said in Beijing on February 10.
Wang Ying, deputy director of Beijing Local Financial Supervision and Administration, told a press conference that e-CNY has been adopted in more than 400,000 Olympics-related scenarios during a pilot scheme.
It is reported that commercial establishments in the sunken plaza of the Olympic village, such as licensed merchandise shops, banks, postal offices, hairdressers and conveniences stores, accept the digital currency for payment, along with cash and Visa cards.
Visitors to the 2022 Beijing Games will be able to download a digital yuan wallet app and load digital money onto a physical card, without the need for a domestic bank account.
China's digital yuan is a form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) which many other central banks worldwide are also working on — though the Chinese central bank is way ahead of its global peers. It has been even hailed as the "new infrastructure" of a digital economy.
Since 2022, favorable policies encouraging the penetration of the digital currency have been rolled out in quick succession. The People's Bank of China (PBoC) and four other regulatory departments jointly issued a five-year plan for financial standardization on February 9, proposing to steadily promote the development of digital currency standards and gradually advance the construction of financial technology standards.
In January 2022, China launched the e-CNY app , while nine banks were authorized to operate the personal digital CNY wallet service. Among them are six state-backed banks, one joint-stock commercial bank (China Commercial Bank) and two private banks (WeBank and MYBank).
Many localities have implemented digital yuan pilots during the recent Chinese New Year holiday by giving away free e-CNY stuffed in virtual "red envelopes." Six state-owned banks in southern China's Shenzhen issued an aggregate CNY 25 million digital yuan as gift money; In Xinjin District in the southwestern city of Chengdu, local banks also distributed 26,900 virtual red envelopes totaling CNY 2 million over the weeklong holiday.
"As of December 31, 2021, the e-CNY had been applied to over 8.08 million scenarios, six times the number from half of a year ago. More than 261 million personal wallets have been opened, with CNY 87.565 billion worth of transactions completed," said Zou Lan, director of the PBoC's financial markets department. "Currently, the pilot program has basically covered the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei or the Capital Economic Zone and a handful of other major cities in China."