China’s sovereign digital currency pilot in ‘early stage’ as transactions hit US$300 million
- Central bank governor Yi Gang says China still in early stages of its digital yuan pilot programme
- The sovereign digital currency has been used in over 4 million transactions totalling 2 billion yuan
People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) governor Yi Gang said China is still in the early stages of developing its central bank digital currency even as the usage of the digital yuan expands rapidly across Chinese cities.
Yi said usage of the digital yuan has increased rapidly over recent months and had been used in 4 million transactions valued at 2 billion yuan (US$299 million) in a trial across four Chinese cities, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an and Chengdu.
“So far, the experiment and pilot programme have been [going] fairly smoothly,” said Yi during a virtual panel discussion that took place at this year’s financial technology jamboree in Hong Kong.
The PBOC’s pilot has discovered over 12,000 use cases for the digital yuan, up 80 per cent from the 6,700 ways to use the digital currency as of late August.