China continues to work to expand its own digital currency. The Asian giant has launched an application for the digital yuan, developed in 2014, in its eagerness to expand its use, as it did in June 2021 with the aim that the winners use it in their local purchases.
This new tool, called e-CNY, will be available in both the Apple and Android (Google Play) app stores and, although it has not been officially implemented nationwide, it will allow users in 11 regions to use it, such as Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi’an, Qingdao, Dalian, and the Winter Olympics area.
Precisely, the launch of this app coincides with two major events: on the one hand, the Chinese New Year, which will take place on February 1; and on the other, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, which will start on the 4th of the same month. For the latter, a large influx of tourists is expected, who will be able to download and use it to send and receive payments, without the need for a bank account.
To reach the pinnacle of success, the digital yuan will have to face off against two of its biggest rivals, namely Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat. Until October 2021, they opened, in its pilot version, a digital yuan account, with accumulated transactions reaching 9.7 billion dollars, according to Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute.
It should be clarified that this digital currency is not a cryptocurrency, since unlike bitcoin, for example, it is issued and controlled by the People’s Bank of China to replace bills and coins. Therefore, it is not a decentralized form of payment and will not operate on the blockchain.