Recently, a number of Chinese banks managed to conduct trials for their digital yuan experiment. The trials themselves were conducted at a couple of big department stores in Shanghai, namely New World Daimaru Department Store and Shanghai New World City. In addition to these two, Taikang Food Store also assisted in handling thousands of digital yuan transactions this past weekend.
Digitized yuan payments to made available as an alternate form of payment
In accordance with the trials that were conducted, a number of retailers have decided to have payments in a digitized form. This was all part of an ongoing sales campaign that took place in collaboration with International Women’s Day. Li Wei, the brand director for Shanghai New World, had commented that his firm had also reached out through a variety of different commercial banks in an effort to make discounts available in accordance with the campaign.
Li Wei further stated that his team had worked diligently to ensure that all forms of digital payments will be upgraded well ahead of the trial program. He believes that the program will offer some much-needed extra stimulus that can be utilized by shoppers ahead of the sales campaign.
Major banks participate in trials as Shanghai looks to accelerate its yuan program
A number of major banks also took part in the trial program, most notably China Construction Bank as well as the Bank of Communications. Both of these banks had provided virtual coupons to retailers in an attempt to reward those customers who had elected to play with the new digital yuan. In addition to this, the participants of the program were also required to go to local branches of the aforementioned banks (the branches had been pre-selected) if they wanted to officially apply and have the new digital yuan be added on their phones via an app.
Shanghai and China, in general, have been aiming to accelerate their currency for a while now, and this new digital yuan serves as proof of that. Lastly, China had also launched CBDC trials in a few select regions throughout the country, namely Xiong’an, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Suzhou, in April of last year. These trials have now been extended to Dalian, Changsha, Xi’an, Hainan, Qingdao, and of course, Shanghai itself.
