Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are in various stages of development, launch and use around the world, but you could say that in Europe and the United States, it’s all about catching up with China.
February is therefore shaping up to be a month of red letters for the CBDC landscape. Beijing is expected to roll out its digital yuan nationwide during the 2022 Winter Olympics, as Bloomberg reported.
The wider deployment would take place after a series of trials, including in retail and home environments, was reportedly completed. Pilot tests in several cities have enabled users to purchase goods and services and pay utilities and other bills.
Read also: China tests digital yuan in salary payments
As Bloomberg reported, a number of banks and businesses had set up shop this month at a trade fair to promote the digital yuan. And to illustrate the interplay between consumer commerce and digital currency, companies such as JD.com and Ant Group presented demonstrations of how apps work with the CBDC and how payments could be made at ATMs. automatic.
In an article published over the summer by the People’s Bank of China, titled “E-CNY Research and Development Progress in China,” the PBOC wrote that the digital yuan, at a high level, is envisioned as “a value based, quasi-account and account-based hybrid payment instrument, with legal tender and loosely coupled account link.
Focusing on retail and the domestic market – and with the CBDC serving as a cash surrogate, according to the newspaper – the PBOC “issues e-CNYs to authorized operators who are commercial banks, and manages e-CNYs. -CNY throughout its life cycle. Meanwhile, it is the authorized operators and other commercial institutions that exchange and disseminate e-CNYs to the public. “
Home use – Initially
But while the initial focus is on domestic use cases, the document also notes that the PBOC “will actively respond to initiatives by the G20 and other international organizations on improving cross-border payments, and explore the applicability. of the CBDC in cross-border scenarios “.
Of course, anonymity remains an issue, and the central bank mentions the concept of “managed anonymity”, in which anonymity will be in place for low value transactions, but the information will be “traceable” for payments. valuable. In the latter case, the bank said, “it is necessary to guard against the misuse of the e-CNY in illegal and criminal activities, such as tele-fraud, Internet gambling, money laundering and tax evasion “.
The digital payment system would not provide information to third parties or other government agencies “unless otherwise specified in laws and regulations.” We find that the door is open here, of course, to indeed stipulate otherwise in these laws and regulations.
February’s targeted rollout may have its technical issues, and of course, with any massive monetary initiative, education will be key. But then again, there is already a semblance of critical mass for digital payments in this market, as WeChat and Alipay have been and are used by hundreds of millions of consumers. Adding the digital yuan to the mix can be intuitive.
A few months away from the winter games, and with 25 million e-wallets open to use the digital yuan starting this summer, the real and real-time launch of the digital yuan looms large. The deployment may be instructive for other countries piloting their own CBDC deployments.
Support for these CBDCs is increasing. Euronews reported that, according to surveys of more than 31,000 Europeans over the summer, significant percentages (although still in the minority) of individuals were in favor of the CBDCs created to “assert the monetary independence of the country. ‘EU’. In Italy, 41% expressed this sentiment, compared to 40% in Greece.
This feeling comes as the Bank for International Settlements recently said, as noted in this space, that central banks need to step up their CBDC efforts.
Learn more: Official urges central banks to embrace digital currency
There are, of course, a number of individual initiatives at play here in the EU. In a recent example, Turkey’s central bank said it has set up the Digital Turkish Lira Collaboration Platform to further research the possibilities of a digital currency.
Read here: Central Bank of Turkey looks at digital currency; Abra Crypto Wealth Management Platform Cleans $ 55 Million
——————————
NEW PYMNTS DATA: TODAY’S SELF-SERVICE PURCHASE JOURNEY – SEPTEMBER 2021
On: Eighty percent of consumers want to use non-traditional payment options like self-service, but only 35 percent were able to use them for their most recent purchases. Today’s Self-Service Shopping Journey, a PYMNTS and Toshiba Collaboration, analyzes more than 2,500 responses to find out how merchants can address availability and perception issues to meet demand for self-service kiosks.
