China digital currency: leading mobile payment apps Alipay, WeChat Pay install new features to help widen e-CNY roll-out

China’s sovereign digital currency, known as e-CNY, is on track to achieve greater exposure in more cities across the mainland, as leading domestic mobile payments providers Alipay and WeChat Pay install new features to support its wider roll-out.

Alipay, operated by financial technology giant Ant Group, announced on Thursday that its app has added a button that enables users to search for and download the official e-CNY wallet within its platform. By opening an account using the same phone number associated with Alipay, users can make purchases with e-CNY on the app.

It also said that nearly 6 million digital yuan wallets have been “pushed” to merchants on Alipay’s platform, a process that enables a new e-CNY user to initiate that payment option. Alipay, which has about 900 million users, activated the payment option last year. Ant is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post.

WeChat Pay, operated by Tencent Holdings, last month set up a similar e-CNY wallet function on its app, about three months after it adopted digital yuan as a payment option. The mobile payments platform, part of multipurpose super app WeChat, had about 900 million users at the end of December.

In January, on-demand services provider Meituan allowed more than 200 types of offline merchants, including restaurants, grocery stores and hotels, to accept e-CNY payments. E-commerce giant JD.com earlier made e-CNY payment an option for purchases made on its platform.