Chinese e-commerce company JD.com to accept digital yuan.

Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc has become the country’s first virtual platform to accept Beijing’s homegrown digital currency.

According to the Reuters report, Chinese e-commerce company JD.com has become the first Chinese company to accept digital yuan as a mode of payment. JD Digits, the company’s fintech arm, will accept Chinese digital yuan as payment for some products on its online mall, as part of an experimental giveaway of digital yuan to Suzhou citizens, near Shanghai to a post on the company’s official WeChat account. Central banks across countries are actively working on CBDCs. 

The PBoC will issue 200 digital yuan to 100,000 customers. 

According to the report, under the Suzhou programme, the municipal government and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will issue 200 digital yuan “red envelopes” to 100,000 consumers selected through a lottery. Suzhou’s scheme is the second such digital lottery after the PBoC issued 10 million yuan worth of digital currency to 50,000 randomly selected consumers in Shenzhen earlier. Chinese central bank Governor Yi Gang said last month that more than 2 billion yuan had been spent using China’s digital currency so far in 4 million separate transactions.    

Central banks across countries continue to explore CBDC. 

Many major central banks across countries are now actively researching central bank digital currencies and making real-world testing plans. Some smaller economies have already launched versions of their digital currencies. China is the only major country to complete the development and initiate a full-fledged plan to test digital yuan. The Cayman island launched a national digital currency earlier this year. Countries including Canada, Japan, the Philippines, and many others are actively exploring CBDCs. As reported earlier, Suzhou is all set to become the next city to trial China’s digital yuan, as the central bank of China prepares to roll out central bank digital currency infrastructure in the coming weeks.