The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is set to be a momentous testing event for the Chinese central bank’s ongoing unrolling of the digital renminbi.
Beijing officials said that they are still steadily advancing renminbi application trials, with the Beijing Winter Olympics expected to the “largest and most in-depth pressure test of digital renminbi usage.”
State-owned media reports that nearly 400,000 digital renminbi applications have already been successfully deployed at Beijing Winter Olympics Sites, covering a total of seven usage categories including transit, food and accommodation payments.
Huo Xuewen (霍学文), party chief of the Beijing financial authority, said that Beijing’s goal is to expand digital renminbi applications to over one million locations in the city before the end of 2021.
Huo also wants Beijing to play a leading role in use of the digital renminbi for advance payments, supply chain financing, industrial chain financing and other areas.
