The People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, will expand the rollout of its central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, to four provinces in the country, including Guangdong.
According to a report published by the South China Morning Post on Tuesday, PBoC Deputy Governor Fan Yifei said at an event in Suzhou that the bank would conduct e-CNY trials in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Sichuan provinces. . With a combined population of more than 360 million people, this move would mark a notable expansion of the central bank’s CBDC plans, which have been largely limited to individual cities, merchants and select regions.
China digital currency: Beijing to expand e-CNY trials to four entire provinces including Guangdong https://t.co/kLnNnqn5iq
— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) September 20, 2022
With its first CBDC trials launched in April 2020, China’s central bank has set out to finally replace cash with the digital yuan. In January 2022, 261 million users had created digital wallets for e-CNY, with transactions worth more than $13 billion. The country also launched digital currency for foreign athletes visiting the country during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and began allowing e-CNY to be used as payment for certain public buses in August.
To date, neither the PBoC nor Chinese government officials have announced a plan to make CBDC available throughout the country. Fan said expansion to the four provinces would come “at the right time.”
The Bahamas became the first country to officially launch a nationwide CBDC – its Sand Dollar – in October 2020. Both Nigeria and China launched their respective digital currencies in trials, while the world’s largest economic power, the United States. United States, has not announced definitive plans to launch a digital dollar. Under US President Joe Biden’s executive order on digital assets in March, government agencies and departments have begun exploring the designs of CBDCs, as well as their potential benefits and risks.
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