Overview of China’s Progress with its e-CNY Pilot

China has been working hard to get its e-CNY ready in the run up to the Beijing winter Olympics with the aim of using the games to test its CBDC. The e-CNY could be used by visitors to China as well as the local population. For the Chinese population, the e-CNY has to be evaluated alongside the ubiquitous WeChat Pay and Alipay payment systems.

The e-CNY ‘project’

The e-CNY pilot started in October 2020 and is now live in 12 cities, including Beijing and Hebei Province’s Zhangjiakou, home to the Winter Games venues. By the end of 2021 transactions worth 87.5 billion yuan, almost $13.75 billion, had been made in e-CNY, about 0.02% of all mobile payment transactions in 2020. 261 million people were said to be using the e-CNY by the end of 2021 with eight million merchants accepting it.