China Working With Global Giants to Accelerate the Roll-Out of its Digital Currency

By Kapil Gauhar

According to the reports, China is working with Global Tech Giants to pave the way for its central bank-backed digital currency. Per the reports by Global Times, there are several Chinese tech giants, including Huawei, Tencent and Alibaba, as well as China Merchants Bank, have been working with the People’s Bank of China in order to issue an official digital yuan.

The industry insiders tell the Global Times that Alibaba, the cloud computing giant and the financial arm of Chinese e-commerce Alipay, has filed 5 patents from January 2020 through March that are associated to the development of china’s digital yuan.

As per the insider –

“Judging from the patents, the first step of technological development has been basically completed.”

Cao Yan, the managing director of Digital Renaissance Foundation, speaking to the Global Times, says –

“If there is a chance China is considering lowering its interest rate into negative territory as an final option and directing such policy to commercial loans and lending, a circulated digital currency rather than M0 [cash] will be able to achieve that.”

Economic pressures too stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, which is believed to have originated in China’s Wuhan, have trumped up efforts to solidify the new currency’s common features as well as functions.

The industry insiders say that the China’s central bank is now drafting legislation to accelerate the roll-out of the digital currency following several patents covering a spate of technological issues, including transaction history, anti-money laundering, anonymous trading support, issuance and digital wallets that will be used for storing the currency.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has not yet issued any exact launch date for its central bank-backed digital yuan.