Singapore Firm Strikes Cross-border Digital Yuan Deal with Chinese Bank
A Singaporean payments firm has sealed a “cross-border” digital yuan cooperation deal with a major Chinese bank, in another breakthrough for the CBDC.
Per the Shanghai Securities News, the deal was concluded by Thunes, a global payment infrastructure provider, and the China Construction Bank (CCB).
The CCB is a state-owned financial institution that comprises one of China’s “big four” commercial banks.
Thunes, headquartered in Singapore, is a B2B payments provider to customers such as Uber and Deliveroo.
The deal will see Thunes and the CCB “cooperate to explore digital yuan cross-border [settlement] and payment solutions.”
It will allow parties to make digital yuan settlements in “export-based cross-border e-commerce” and a range of “remittance scenarios.”
Before 2023, Chinese officials had insisted that the e-CNY was primarily a domestic project.
They said it was mainly intended as a digital cash alternative for retail payments.
But since the turn of the year, the central People's Bank of China (PBoC) and its partners have changed their messaging, with more talk of “cross-border” uses of the coin.
An increasing number of “cross-border” pilot projects have materialized in Hong Kong and neighboring Mainland Chinese cities.
More recently, the PBoC has established an e-CNY link to Hong Kong’s FPS payment platform.
And during the recent Asian Games in Hangzhou, the PBoC and its partners launched a range of e-CNY services for foreign students and overseas visitors to China.
However, any sort of expansion to the Singaporean market – or other markets in Thunes’ network – would mark a major departure for the PBoC.
The move could potentially open the door for overseas e-commerce platforms to sell goods to Chinese buyers who pay in CBDC
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