China continues expanding the scope of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) by debuting digital yuan payments for transport services. According to an official Wednesday announcement, the Beijing subway has launched a pilot program enabling passengers to access 24 subway lines and four suburban railway stations using the digital yuan, also known as e-CNY. The new service is only available for customers witb a bank account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a major bank involved in China’s CBDC tests. “You need to download a mobile app that is linked with your bank account to access the service,” …
China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, will provide backup for major retail payment services like AliPay and WeChat Pay as its key objective, according to an official at the People’s Bank of China. Mu Changchun, head of the People’s Bank of China’s digital currency research institute, claimed that China’s digital yuan is needed to ensure financial stability in case “something happens” to AliPay or WeChat Pay, the South China Morning Post reports. Speaking at an online panel discussion on Thursday, Mu stated that Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay account for 98% of the mobile payment market in China, …
The Bank of France successfully piloted a central bank digital currency — or CBDC — experiment in December, using the technology to settle monetary fund shares on a private blockchain platform for the first time. As announced by Le Banque de France on Jan. 19, the pilot commenced on Dec. 17, and saw 2 million euros ($2.4 million) worth of simulated shares purchased and sold by investors using a CBDC. The pilot took place with distributed ledger technology provided by SETL — a UK-based regulated blockchain services provider, which also provided the CBDC stablecoin. SETL’s IZNEZ record-keeping platform was used …
China’s nationwide blockchain project, the Blockchain Service Network, or BSN, will be integrating stablecoin support in 2021. Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology, a major tech company involved in the BSN development, told Cointelegraph that the project will soon start integrating stablecoins. Piloted in late 2019, China’s BSN is a state-backed initiative that intends to support medium-sized businesses in building and deploying blockchain applications. The exec explained that stablecoins will be used as payment for various services on the BSN ecosystem, including cloud resources. “Only stablecoins can make it much easier, quicker and safer,” the executive noted. Stablecoins will …
A group of state-run commercial banks in China are reportedly conducting a large-scale internal testing of a digital wallet designed for China’s national digital currency, the digital yuan. According to an Aug. 5 report by Reuters, the banks are testing the wallet application to transfer money and make payments in China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC. As reported, the development was initially revealed to China’s state-backed newspaper the 21st Century Business Herald by several employees at involved state banks in cities including Shenzhen. The new development represents another major milestone in China’s progress in adopting the digital yuan and …