China’s digital renminbi pilot sites breached the 8 million threshold at the end of 2021, less than two years following the official launch of trials.
As of 31 December 2021 China was host to over 8.0851 million digital renminbi trial sites, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on 18 January.
China has also seen the opening of 261 million personal digital renminbi wallets, used to process transactions totalling 87.565 billion yuan.
Zou Lan (邹澜), head of PBOC’s financial markets department, said that digital renminbi trials have been launched in cities including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong’an New District, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi’an, Qingdao, Dalian and the Beijing Winter Olympics venues.
The next step will be for PBOC to continue to advance research and development of the digital renminbi, as well as “deepen trial usage for retail transactions, daily living payments and government services, and give the digital renminbi a foothold for servicing the real economy and the lives of ordinary citizens.”
