China will expand CBDC trials to most populous province: Report

cointelegraph.com:

The People’s Bank of China, or PBoC, will reportedly expand deployment of its central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, to four of the country’s provinces, including Guangdong.

According to a Tuesday report from the South China Morning Post, PBoC deputy governor Fan Yifei said at an event in Suzhou that the bank would be rolling out e-CNY trials in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Sichuan. With a combined population of more than 360 million people, the reported move would be a marked expansion of the central bank’s CBDC plans, which have been largely limited to individual cities, merchants and select regions.

China digital currency: Beijing to expand e-CNY trials to four entire provinces including Guangdong https://t.co/kLnNnqn5iq

With its first CBDC trials launched in April 2020, China’s central bank has been aiming to eventually replace cash with the digital yuan. As of January 2022, a reported 261 million users have set up digital wallets for the e-CNY with more than $13 billion worth of transactions. The country also rolled out the digital currency for visiting foreign athletes during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and began allowing the use of the e-CNY as payment for certain public buses in August.

To date, neither the PBoC nor Chinese government officials have announced a plan to make the CBDC available across the entirety of the country. Fan said the expansion to the four provinces would happen “at a proper time.”

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The Bahamas became the first country to officially launch a CBDC nationwide — its Sand Dollar — in October 2020. Both Nigeria and China rolled out their respective digital currencies