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Beijing Rail Embraces Digital Yuan Payments
Beijing subway has officially launched a new program that allows passengers to pay for rides with the central bank digital currency (CBDC) also known as the digital yuan. Find out more about China ‘s digital yuan below.
The news follows the subway system in East Chinaโs Jiangsu province in the city of Suzhou which also allows digital yuan payments for subway fares.
Digital Yuan Can Now Be Used to Pay for Fares on Chinaโs Major Public Transport Railways
Chinaโs capital of Beijing and the Peopleโs Bank of China (PBOC) has been moving fast in regard to pushing CBDC adoption in the country. Thereโs been a bunch of red envelope lotteries giving the digital yuan away to citizens, 3,000 automated teller machines (ATMs) now allow digital yuan withdrawals in Beijing; subcontractors are being paid in the CBDC in Chinaโs Xiongโan New Area, and Hong Kong is connecting with the CBDC.
On top of all that, JD.com employees have been paid in the digital yuan, and firms like Mastercard, Ant, Tencent, and Alibaba have been engaging with the CBDC as well. Rumor has it that Chinaโs digital yuan smart card will be very advanced, featuring biometrics and fingerprint scanning. Now the central bankโs digital currency is invading Chinaโs subways, as customers in Suzhouโs and Beijingโs subway rails can pay for fares with the CBDC.
Theย official announcementย stemming from Beijing explains that the cityโs subway operator aims to make the CBDC fuel the โnew digital travel experience.โ Aย regional reportย from the Global Times says the digital yuan is accepted at 24 subway railway lines and four suburban railway lines in Beijing. The report discussed the new service with a Beijing Municipal Commission of Public Transport customer service representative.
โYou need to download a mobile app that is linked with your bank account to access the service,โ the representative stressed.
The railway line 5 in Suzhou was the first subway system in China to start accepting the digital yuan. According to the Global Times, local reports say that Chengdu has finished integrating the CBDC system and aims to support the digital yuan in public transport soon.
Despite all of the aforementioned digital yuan announcements made this year, itโs still hard to estimate how much adoption is really happening. A report published in mid-May showed that the CBDCโs alleged hotspot in Shenzhen was not seeing widespread acceptance. The same could be said for Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelaโs Petro, which saw a variety of government-produced adoption announcements.
Widespread petro (PTR) acceptance in Venezuela is extremely lackluster to this day even though the Venezuelan government announced that โthousandsโ of merchants would accept PTR and people would get government payments in petro as well. With Chinaโs communist government and massive internet firewall, itโs really hard to say whether or not the digital yuan is really thriving.