Representatives of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) have reported on the digital yuan’s current success, establishing itself as the most widely used CBDC in the world.
The volume of transactions of the Chinese CBDC has exceeded 100 billion yuan (~$13.9 billion). It became known from a message of the PBoC’s Digital Currency Institute, published on WeChat. So, at the pilot stage, the digital yuan is the largest CBDC in the world.
According to the PBoC, the e-CNY is being tested in 15 Chinese provinces by early fall. The total number of transactions during this time has exceeded 360 million. Over 5.6 million stores accept the digital yuan as a payment instrument. Representatives of the country’s public and financial sectors also participate in CBDC testing.
Among the PBoC’s immediate plans is to test cross-border payments between Hong Kong and Mainland China. The PRC plans to further explore a cross-border wholesale CBDC with the active participation of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The BIS representatives recently announced a successful test of this type of digital currency, which included Mainland China and Hong Kong.
The People’s Bank of China said that one of the important areas of the ongoing research on retail CBDCs is to improve the mechanisms for protecting user data. The institution announced that the priority in this context is anonymity for small amounts and traceability of large amounts.
Recall that China is a leader not only in CBDC but also in the field of blockchain development, as 84% of all patents on related technologies accounted for the PRC.
