China’s Digital Yuan Hits $250 Billion Transaction Volume, Central Bank Governor Reports

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) revealed that $250 billion worth of transactions have taken place using the country’s central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC) digital yuan in 18 months since the start of its pilot.

Speaking at a conference in Singapore, China’s central bank governor Yi Gang said that the central bank has transacted 1.8 trillion yuan as of the end of June.

The governor claimed that since the initial rollout of the digital yuan in January last year, there have been approximately 950 million transactions made from approximately 120 million wallets with an average transaction amount of roughly $260.

He further claimed that around 16.5 billion digital yuan was in circulation at the end of June, representing only 0.16% of China’s monetary supply. 

The digital yuan transactions amounting to $250 billion represent a growth of over 70% compared to the figure cited by the central bank in August 2022.

China Continues To Push Digital Yuan Adoption

The retail adoption of China’s digital yuan has gained significant momentum in the last 18 months with the government expanding the digital currency’s use cases.

Along with enabling various use cases within mainland China, the central bank is also looking outside the mainland for digital currency’s use cases. 

As the South China Morning Post reported earlier, Bank of China Hong Kong started a new digital yuan trial at more than 200 outlets on 18th July with a new shopping festival for people traveling from the mainland in an attempt to boost cross-border use of the CBDC. 

China had conducted a few trials in Hong Kong in the past year. 

The expansion to Hong Kong aims at  “further promoting the cross-border applications of e-CNY”, BOCHK said in a statement.

In 2023, the BCHK initiated a program aimed at motivating customers to create a BOC e-CNY wallet. By doing so, customers received digital red packets worth 100 yuan, which could be utilized to purchase goods at 14 locations of the local supermarket chain, U Select, spread across Hong Kong.

In January, China’s central bank unveiled smart contract functionality in digital along with a slew of new use cases. 

The smart contract functionality was launched through the retail and food delivery service app Meituan.

China Securities Journal reported in January that the digital yuan was used to buy securities for the first time.

The report claimed that investors can also use digital yuan to buy securities on Soochow Securities app, a local brokerage firm.