Suzhou, China, has reported that more than 29.16 million residents now have digital yuan wallets, as the nation’s CBDC project continues to gather pace.
According to a Weibo post from the Suzhou Radio and Television Station, Suzhou-based individuals and firms transacted a total of over $416,811,390,000 worth of CBDC in 2023.
Suzhou: China’s CBDC Success Story?
City officials said Suzhou CBDC transactions accounted for 10% of all the digital yuan transactions conducted in Jiangsu Province last year.
They added that 90% of the province’s volume of transactions was conducted in Suzhou in 2023.
Just under 2 million Suzhou-based firms, public bodies, and state-run organizations have also opened corporate digital yuan accounts.
The city’s Suzhou Digital Yuan Pilot and Digital Financial Industry Development Working Conference celebrated the fact that the “relevant indicators” show the city “ranked first in the province” in 2023.
The city claimed that the “number of active wallets in Suzhou has increased several times compared to 2022.”
Both the city and the wider Jiangsu Province have made significant CBDC inroads in recent years.
In May 2020, the government of the city’s Xiangcheng District announced a plan to start paying “part” of its staff’s monthly salaries in e-CNY tokens.
The province also made international headlines when the city of Changshu declared that “all public officials and employees of state-owned enterprises” would be paid in digital yuan as of May 2023.
Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. (Source: Dagvidur [CC BY-SA 4.0])
Digital Yuan: Big Year Ahead for China’s CBDC?
China is eyeing ambitious moves for its CBDC in 2024, both at home and abroad. Earlier this month, Beijing completed a cross-border CBDC transaction worth $13.6 million in the UAE.
The deal made use of both the Emirati digital dirham and the digital yuan. It follows extensive cross-border pilot operations in Hong Kong and Macao.
Russia is discussing with China the possibility of taking out loans in Yuan, but there has been no decision yet, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said. He reiterated that any actions with Russian assets abroad will receive a symmetrical response. https://t.co/JXJRxVVPJY
— NOELREPORTS (@NOELreports) February 26, 2024
However, the rise of digital yuan innovation has also led to an increase in CBDC-themed scams, police warned in January.
Scammers have begun creating bogus digital yuan apps designed to look like the central bank’s official CBDC platforms.
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