Beijing will build a legal digital currency pilot zone and a digital financial system, relying on the People's Bank of China's trade and finance blockchain platform to form a trade and finance blockchain standard system.
The overall plan for the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone announced on September 21 mentions these, and says it supports the PBOC's Digital Currency Institute in setting up a financial technology center.
According to the 21st Century Business Herald, digital RMB has already begun to test "credit card repayment" as a traffic entry-level scenario, in addition to transferring funds and paying bills.
The digital RMB pilot is still being tested internally in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan New Area, Chengdu and the future Winter Olympics park.
Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan and Chengdu represent the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and the central and western regions of China, where the People's Bank of China is conducting pilot tests of digital RMB.
On Sept. 14, PBOC Vice Governor Fan Yifei wrote in an article that digital RMB is a public product provided by the central bank to the public without interest, and that the central bank does not charge for services such as exchange and circulation, according to the fee structure of M0.
According to M0's distribution model, commercial banks are responsible for exchanging digital RMBs with the public.
In order to ensure the safety and stability of the digital RMB system, commercial banks with strong capital and technical capabilities should be prudently selected as the designated operating agency to provide digital RMB exchange services.
On the premise of centralized management by the central bank, we will strike a balance between stability and innovation, and explore cooperation models between the designated operator and other commercial banks and institutions to jointly provide digital RMB circulation services.