China is aiming to carry out the initial real-world trial of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to local news outlet Caijing. The initial test for the CBDC is scheduled for Shenzhen before the end of the year, possibly including the city of Suzhou as well.
With the support of the People’s Bank of China, four major banks and key economic participants including China Telecom will be trialling digital currency payments, as per one Coin Telegraph report. Each bank will manage the digital currency in a different way, competing against one another to safeguard broader future adoption.
The Caijing report stated:
One step will be to rationally select the pilot verification area, scenario and service scope, and steadily promote the introduction and application of digital form of fiat currency.
Compared with the previous pilot, this time the central bank’s legal digital currency pilot will go out of the central bank system and enter real service scenarios such as transportation, education, and medical treatment, reaching C-end users and generating frequent applications.
The country’s central bank announced its intention to accelerate the development of its own digital currency and also confirmed its plans to allocate more resources to the implementation of this task.
The CBDC debut will make the People’s Bank of China the first central bank in the world to issue a cryptocurrency, making the most of the country’s efforts to fully get behind fintech this year.
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