Digital Yuan witnessed huge increase last year to $11.24 Billion

• There was a surge in the digital currency Yuan in the previous year. 
• Four airdrops took place last year, three of which were focused on distribution of digital Yuan for public transportation in the form of coupons.
• The authorities plan to expand the reach of eCNY in the coming future.  

There was an increase seen in the digital transactions of the Chinese Yuan currency. The People’s Bank of China(PBOC) announced on Tuesday its value to be US$11.238 billion which is 87.565 billion Yuan.

The last shared data with the general public was in October and the latest tally saw an increase of 140%. According to PBOC, the number of personal digital Yuan wallets increased by 86.4% over the same time period to 261 million. 

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The e-CNY or the digital Yuan is one of the first sovereign currencies to be launched. It is said to be the most advanced central bank digital currency(CBDC) issued by China, a major world power.

Four digital Yuan airdrops took place from October 22 to December 31, out of which two were in Beijing, one in Qingdao and the other one in Haikou. The airdrops in Beijing and Qingdao mainly focused on the distribution of the digital Yuan for public transportations in the form of coupons. 

The upcoming Winter Olympics was anticipated to be one of the major showcases for the digital Yuan but due to Covid 19 restrictions and concerns, the event has to close the public sale of the tickets.  

Recently on January 4, the People’s Bank of China released an e-CNY wallet application one mobile app stores which gained considerable public interest. And in four days, it became the most downloaded app on China’s Apple iOS App store and has been downloaded more than 2.5 billion times. 

According to Mao, who relies on Alipay and WeChatpay, there are not a lot of application scenarios for e-CNY and not many merchants accept it. 

According to G. Bin Zhao, senior economist at PwC China, said it takes quite a time for people to accept e-CNY. 

But the authorities have ways to promote mass adoption like prioritising the use of e-CNY in payments for water, electricity etc. The authorities are also planning to use e-CNY for wider payments which as of now is mostly for retail payments. And is slowly planned to expand to trade, cross-border payments etc. 

This increase in the last tally was massive in comparison to the last report that came. And it will be interesting to see how much the digital Yuan grows in the coming years.