China’s Digital Yuan: Everything You Need to Know

With a surge in online adoption among consumers worldwide, mobile payments have also become a significant component of the growth in digital currency. However, it’s not just the mandarins who are working overtime to make the digital currency a success.

Also playing their part are individuals who, despite, have not-so-quietly gained valuable experience in the field of virtual money by setting up a wide array of bitcoin exchanges across the world.

If you’re wondering what these exchanges do, well, they allow customers to use their purchasing power to buy goods and services using bitcoins, as it’s become a fairly popular virtual currency in the field of online payments.

If you want to know more about bitcoin trading, then you can visit the official site.

Digital currency is a type of currency that is used to buy and sell goods and services and make payments. To be precise, it is an electronic version of fiat money or a currency issued by central banks. Another common term for digital currencies is digital assets and they can be created by central banks to pay debt or tax and can be used to hold as an alternative to fiat currencies.

What is e-Yuan or Digital Yuan, the new China government-backed cryptocurrency?

In late December, Chinese state-backed news agency Xinhua ran an article announcing the establishment of the digital currency, “e-Yuan”, which is allegedly derived from the Chinese name of the 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Zhang Chunqiao. “Once the government has set a timetable for issuing the digital currency, the public will be able to use e-Yuan to settle government payments, make remittances, pay taxes, and move capital overseas,” wrote Xinhua. The digital currency was initially created by a research team within the People’s Bank of China and will be issued by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which is a regulatory body under the Ministry of Finance.

How does this new digital work?

According to the regulators, the digital currency is already live and can be traded on domestic and international exchanges. With the first public trial period now over, users are able to transact with no problems as long as they are familiar with the new currencies’ trading process.

However, in developing countries, internet penetration is still very low and mobile payment systems are not as pervasive as they are in the US, Europe, and Japan.

In addition to the digital currency, the pilot plan also includes a “Yuan Bank” app, which allows the adoption of a common digital currency for all major financial institutions, and a digital identity system to help in anti-money laundering monitoring and tax evasion prevention.

Adoption and integration in the financial ecosystem

To keep up with the rising cryptocurrency trend, more and more banks, lenders, credit card networks, e-payment networks, fintech companies, and other digital payment providers are striving to establish partnerships with Bitcoin exchanges to avoid unnecessary legal risks.

Bank of America, for instance, announced in September that it has partnered with Circle Internet Financial to provide its business customers with access to the “fast, low-cost, and safe” Bitcoin payment processing service.

In the meantime, the electronic currency could have serious applications in areas such as remittance services, international settlements, and post-trade settlements. Based on comments from participants, this may result in a disruption of the established system.

Bitcoin exchange platforms, for instance, currently handle more than $50 billion in transaction volume, but many companies with their own payment systems have expressed their willingness to partner with those platforms to offer more services.