20 More Chinese Firms Collaborate With the Chinese Central Bank to Launch Digital Yuan

The Chinese central bank - the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) - is making new partnerships with local companies to test its central bank digital currency, Digital Yuan.

Two weeks back, the Chinese central bank partnered with ride-hailing giant Didi to test the use of the Digital Yuan across Didi’s massive customer base. Taking it even further, the central bank has now partnered with 20 other local companies in an aggressive push for its Digital Yuan use.

For the testing of Digital Yuan, the PBoC has roped-in some of the state-owned Chinese banks as well as some of the giant telecom players like China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, and Huawei.

As per the reports, all the participating banks have converted part of their deposits into digital currencies and is looking for sectors to push the use of Digital Yuan. Besides, the banks have also developed and tested all the wallet platforms required to store the digital currency.

For the initial real-world testing, the PBoC decided to pay the salaries of the state-employees in four cities - Chengdu, Shenzhen, Suzhou, and Xiong’an - in Digital Yuan.

A major aggressive push was when the PBoC partnered with Didi to test its Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP). Didi Chuxing has over 550 million users across 440 cities that provides a sizeable sample to test the Digital Yuan.

PBoC’s another major partnership is with the Tencent-backed food delivery startup Meituan Dianping to test and trial the digital currency.

For the deployment process of the entire project, the PBoC has also collaborated with local tech giants like AliPay and WeChat. Both these companies have a strong footprint in the FinTech and the digital payments sector.

Additionally, PBoC is said to be in talks with some of the country’s biggest retail chains like Subway, McDonald’s, Starbucks, however, the details are not yet public. Additionally, PBoC is working out a partnership with video streaming app Bilibili which has a user-base of more than 170 million users.

Although China has been an early participant in the CBDC development, other big economies are taking similar route. UK’s Bank of England is working to test the introduction of CBDC in the country’s financial system. BoE governor Andrew Bailey said that in a few years we will be heading toward some sort of digital currency”.

On the other hand, the U.S. is also warming up to the idea of digital currencies. Last week, the U.S. Regulator gave a green for national banks to provide cryptocurrency custodial services in the market. The lawmakers are also actively considering the prospects of having a Digital Dollar going ahead.