Chinese food delivery giant Meituan has become the latest technology company to integrate central bank payments with digital currency (CBDC) for its services.
Meituan users can connect the RMB digital wallet to their service app and use it for various daily services such as hotel reservations, taxis, and restaurant payments. The daily food and service delivery app registered 660 million customers transactions last year, and the integration of electronic payment of Chinese yuan will help the Beijing government to test its sovereign digital currency on a larger scale.
In recent months, the country’s tech giants such as WeChat and JD.com have joined in the massive and detailed test of e-CNY.
China itself completed CBDC development in 2019, and over the past two years the authorities have been actively testing their use in the retail market. The CBDC pilot program started as a travel grant for government employees and has since expanded to include millions of people and thousands of businesses.
Although there are no signs of a public launch yet, many believe that the increasing pace of testing indicates that the government may try to launch a CBDC during the upcoming Winter Olympics, which begins on February 4.
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Zhou Lan, director of financial markets at the People’s Bank of China, said the cumulative transactions of the Chinese yuan reached 87.57 billion yuan ($13.68 billion). By the end of October 2021, nearly 10 million merchants had activated RMB digital wallets.
China is currently at the fore in the CBDC game, having started the same development in 2014. Although 91 countries have started developing CBDCs, only a few, including China, South Korea, Switzerland and France, have reached a pilot project. Stage. The US is currently going through a debate phase, as lawmakers weigh the pros and cons of the super digital currency.
