
He said the e-CNY’s “acquiring environment” remains a work in progress and is a primary factor holding back a full-scale launch, along with issues related to completing the risk-management and regulatory frameworks.Ī McKinsey report in October pointed to e-CNY as an example of how official central-bank-issued digital currencies “have been met with only moderate adoption.” While the trials show that the e-CNY actually works, the McKinsey report said, they compare with more than two billion monthly active users reported by WeChat Pay and Alipay. Speaking at a November conference, Mu Changchun, who runs the e-CNY project at the People’s Bank of China, appeared to acknowledge the demand challenge. The e-CNY wasn’t a payment option on sites run by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which in 11 days racked up sales of nearly $85 billion, or 8.5 times the amount of digital yuan transacted over 18 months of trials. The company said 100,000 customers used e-CNY in 240,000 orders but declined to say how much of the total $55 billion spent during the sales period it constituted it was likely a fractional portion. made it a payment option during the event as part of a plan to encourage adoption of digital wallets. Pointedly, China’s annual online shopping extravaganza in November, known as Singles Day, featured only limited promotion of e-CNY, a currency designed for the internet. Based on central-bank numbers, the average amount spent per transaction was under $1. Giveaways aren’t nationwide they have been run in particular cities on specific dates and so far have left out small towns and rural areas. “Primarily, e-CNY has been distributed in free-to-enter lottery-type promotions and through discount deals designed to encourage downloads of the central bank’s app and digital wallets. A shopper pays using e-CNY at a store in Sanya, Hainan province.Electronic payments via China's digital currency have enjoyed a stratospheric rise in a matter of days after the novel payment option was made available across the country's major mobile apps.Local services company Meituan said the number of digital yuan-denominated payments jumped 42. I’m sure a majority of participants in the payments ecosystem hope this remains true: There is also interest in how quickly consumers might adopt digital money, but given the poor consumer adoption reported here, perhaps the payment tools consumers use today are sufficient. The primary concern among world leaders is its potential impact in world trade. Inside China, Alipay and WeChat Pay tied to the country’s biggest ecommerce platform and the country’s biggest chat app, respectively are used so widely that even beggars accept handouts via QR.

The world is anxiously watching China’s digital yuan to learn how quickly a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will be adopted.
