A report has concluded that China’s digital yuan has failed to impress in early large-scale pilots, drawing a “lackluster reception” from participants – a fact that could throw up “hurdles to yuan internationalization.”
Bloomberg stated that it had interviewed a number of digital yuan users in Shenzhen, the city that has recently hosted the People’s Bank of China (PBoC)’s biggest central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot to date (involving half a million eligible pilot digital RMB users). The media outlet claimed that the participants it interviewed “showed little interest in switching” to the digital RMB from mobile payment platforms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, adding that some interviewees “balked at the possibility” that the digital yuan “might give authorities easier access to real-time data on their financial lives.”
The PBoC is operating fast-paced trails at a number of Winter Olympics sites, with the clock ticking down to next year’s games, to be held in Beijing in February 2022. The central bank has already stated that it expects both domestic and international participants will be able to make use of the CBDC by the time the games kick off.
But Bloomberg quoted a 36-year-old telecom industry worker named Patricia Chen as stating:
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