The People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) Digital Currency Research Institute has entered a strategic partnership with a key subsidiary of Chinese payments giant UnionPay.
PBOC’s Digital Currency Research Institute recently executed a strategic cooperative agreement with UnionPay Merchant Services (银联商务股份有限公司) (UMS), for the purpose of “jointly researching online and offline payments scenarios and other innovative applications during digital renminbi trials.”
The two parties will also “jointly research expansions to digital renminbi product functions and application scopes, and expedite the establishment of a digital renminbi ecosystem, with reference to UMS’s current operations, and based on the distinctive wallets ecosystem of the digital renminbi.”
UMS, a subsidiary of China Unionpay, was first founded in 2002 in Shanghai, and focuses on bank card acquiring and third-party services.
