China digital currency: Qingdao metro facilitates e-CNY payment even when user balance is too low
- Fare payment can be made when there is no internet connection or if the phone is out of battery, as long as passengers use a digital yuan debit card or special SIM
- As the first country to widely test central bank digital currency, China has been developing its functions since the first citywide experiments in late 2019
China’s coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong province has launched a new “deferred payment” feature for metro passengers wanting to use digital fiat money: they can exit the station even if the wallet balance is not enough.
In addition, fare payment can be facilitated when there is no internet connection or if the phone runs out of battery, as long as passengers use a digital yuan debit card or a special SIM card that supports near-field communication, according to a Monday report by Shandong government-run newspaper Dazhong Daily.
The move, “in compliance with the Ministry of Transport’s industry standards and the People’s Bank of China’s financial security technical regulations, is of great demonstrative significance for the launch of digital yuan payment in rail transport nationwide”, the report said.
What is wCBDC and why is it important for Hong Kong?
It comes after a key update last year when China’s three state-owned telecoms operators – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – rolled out a so-called “super SIM card” that can act as a contactless wallet for central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions, as well as being a digital identity card. It works without internet or power, but needs to have enough funds in the account.
As the first country to widely test the CBDC, China has been developing its functions since the first citywide experiments in late 2019 in four cities: the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, and the Xiong’an New Area in Hebei. Currently, the CBDC is in pilot operation in 26 cities across 17 provincial regions.
Besides transactions, the digital fiat money has also been used to pay salaries and issue corporate and mortgage loans.
Total transactions reached 950 million with a cumulative value of 1.8 trillion yuan (US$249.9 billion) by the end of June 2023, up from 100 billion yuan the previous August, according to former PBOC governor Yi Gang.
Separately, Hong Kong has launched its own CBDC project. Last month, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s de facto central bank, established a wholesale central bank digital currency, or wCBDC, pilot to facilitate instantaneous, large-value interbank settlements of tokenised money.
