The digital yuan is primarily intended for individuals and merchants, not to replace SWIFT or to turn currency into a weapon. This was stated by former People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan, Forkast reports.
The expert highlighted that the e-CNY is not necessarily suitable for cross-border payments. For such purposes it could be adapted in the future, but even then the CBDC would still be geared toward retail applications.
The world must beware of Cold War thinking that would harm everyone, Zhou Xiaochuan stressed.
China has been testing the digital yuan for three years. By the end of 2021, the volume of e-CNY transactions reached 87.57 billion yuan (~$13.68 billion), with 261 million unique digital wallets on record.
In February 2021, the People’s Bank of China and the UAE joined the Bridge project for national digital currencies, launched by regulators in Hong Kong and Thailand.
In April 2022, the People’s Bank of China expanded the e-CNY testing program to 23 cities.
Bank of America forecast the dollar’s continued hegemony thanks to CBDC issuance.
Earlier, ФРБ Boston and MIT presented a white paper and open-source code for the digital dollar as part of the first phase of studying its potential issuance.
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