The city government of Changsha in China reports that nearly 490,000 merchants now embrace digital yuan payments as the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot programme advances.
This year, according to the Changsha Evening News (via Huasheng Online), Changsha expanded its use-case scenarios for the digital yuan “into key areas such as government services, public transport, inclusive finance, and rural revitalization projects.”
The data suggests that as of August 31, 487,300 physical businesses and service providers in the city were taking payments in digital yuan.
According to the authorities, 862,100 corporate wallets and over 22 million digital yuan wallets have been created in Changsha.
As per the report, Changsha had processed 83.7324 million digital yuan transactions worth $1.9 billion in total.
According to the same media report, locals have already used the central bank’s official, recently updated digital yuan app to pay utility bills.
This month, the bank updated its app to provide direct e-CNY payment possibilities.
These enable residents in the pilot zone to top up their mobile phone plans, pay their water bills, and pay their electricity bills all from the app’s user interface.
The media reported that a female Changsha resident with the last name Hu recently paid a phone bill worth about $6.86 using the central bank’s app.
Hu argued that the app made paying for things “very convenient.”
China’s Changsha Announces Additional Digital Yuan Landmarks
The city’s adoption campaigns for CBDC have been among the most ardent in the country.
In response to an announcement made in November 2020, it was included in the pilot zone.
According to city officials, 300,000 businesses in the city processed e-CNY payments in February of this year.
Following up, Changsha declared in April that this figure had increased to 420,000.
As part of a new campaign to encourage e-CNY usage, the city of Shenzhen declared earlier this month that it intended to distribute CBDC tokens to some 50,000 of its citizens.
