China is speeding up the development of a fiat digital currency system as the latest reports showed its central bank if working with a number of local technology companies on this front.
The Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China - China's central bank and ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing recently entered into a strategic partnership agreement to jointly explore the application of digital RMB in the smart travel sector, according to Beijing Business Today.
The two sides expect to establish a partnership to promote the platform ecology of digital RMB in diverse travel scenarios, the report said.
The digital economy has become an important engine driving China's economic development, and a fiat digital currency system will become an important Infrastructure.
In recent years, China's central bank has established the Digital Currency Institute, which has achieved results in research and development in the field of fiat digital currency.
Didi Chuxing said it will cooperate with the Digital Currency Institute to help promote the joint development of the digital economy and the real economy.
According to Caixin, Chinese food delivery firm Meituan Dianping, and video platform Bilibili have also partnered with a number of banks that have participated in the digital currency project.
Meituan Dianping will probably try to expand usage scenarios such as Meituan Bicycle, while the Bilibili's cooperation with participating banks has entered the technical development stage, the report said.
In addition, other companies, including ByteDance, are also discussing the possibility of cooperation with banks.
In a report in April, the Securities Times said that the digital currency of the People's Bank of China was undergoing internal testing at the Agricultural Bank of China, with Shenzhen, Xiong'an, Chengdu, and Suzhou as pilot cities.
The report quoted a person close to regulators as saying that the relevant reports do not represent official actions but relevant work has been proceeding. The public should follow the official statement of the central bank, the person said.
Chinese central bank's digital currency is being tested in several cities, report says
According to previous articles published by the central bank's official WeChat public account, the central bank has completed the top-level design of digital currency, standard formulation, functional research and development, and joint debugging testing in 2019.
The central bank's deputy governor Fan Yifei said on November 28, 2019, that the current work of digital currency is to select pilot verification areas, scenarios and service ranges, optimize and enrich DC / EP functions, and steadily promote the application of digital forms of legal currency.
