The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has flagged the ongoing development of standards to govern the deployment and usage of its new central bank digital currency (CBDC), commonly referred to as the digital renminbi, in a new standardisation plan for the Chinese financial sector.
PBOC, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) jointly issued the “Financial Standardisation 14th Five Year Development Plan” (金融标准化“十四五”发展规划) on 8 February.
The Plan has the goal of the “basic establishment of a standardisation system that corresponds to a modern financial system by 2025,” including “standards that are deeply integrated with financial regulation, financial markets and financial services.”
This includes “steadily advancing research and development of statutory digital currency standards,” and “exploring the development and improvement of statutory digital currency framework standards, with comprehensive consideration of secure and reliable infrastructure, issuance and storage systems, registration standards, payments transaction communication modules and end users.”
The Plan also calls for “steadily advancing the development of fintech standards, and strengthening the research and development and effective application of standards for cloud computing, the blockchain, big data, artificial intelligence, bio-identification and the Internet of Things.”
