China’s largest social media network, WeChat, has reportedly added support for Digital Yuan CNY payments.
WeChat is one of the most popular Chinese messaging and social media apps. It is also one of the major primary apps to support real currency payments.
As part of a digital yuan pilot program, WeChat will allow users to make transactions with digital yuan. The news came as an announcement as WeChat will join the digital yuan pilot program.
As per the announcement, in experimental regions, WeChat has encouraged the usage of the digital renminbi.
The ability to pay with digital RMB has been added to the personal “Payment” page, “Wallet,” and other portals.
Users can concurrently download the “Digital RMB APP,” open the WeBank (WeChat Pay) digital RMB wallet and then utilize digital RMB on WeChat to make multi-scenario payments.
China is still testing out its Digital Yuan
Since the country’s digital yuan is still in its testing phase, WeChat, with its broad audience, can assist China in helping users test its feasibility and let them transact it on its platform.
According to China’s central bank, the country’s Digital Yuan tests are being expanded to additional locations, including Hangzhou, which will host the Asian Games in September.
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the country’s central bank, aims to expand the digitization experiments to additional places.
As a response to digital transformation and the rapid emergence of private digital platforms, the PBoC intends to establish the Digital Yuan, also known as Digital Renminbi.
Apart from WeChat, its competitor Alipay also indicates its plans to add digital yuan payments. Alipay had reportedly started exploring the CNY adoption in 2021.
The central bank should collaborate with WeChat and Alipay and work closely to popularize the digital yuan. It is estimated that approximately 140 million Chinese population have opened up their digital yuan wallets.