Beijing headquartered food delivery platform Meituan Dianping currently has over 435 million regular users, with transactions worth billions of dollars each day. Its inclusion in the trial paves way for mass adoption of digital yuan, also referred to as Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP).
Without referring to any official, Bloomberg has reported that Meituan is in discussion with the research division of China’s central bank, the Digital Currency Research Institute, concerning the possibilities of use for its CBDC. Nevertheless, both parties have not disclosed information about their collaboration.
The Tencent assisted video streaming platform Bilibili is also in negotiations with the PBoC to trial the digital yuan. In recent times, one of the biggest ride-hailing apps DiDi also joined the venture.
The PBoC had already made clear that it does not have a particular roll out date for the digital yuan, but the central bank and its academic division have been boosting their measures to study the real-life use scenarios of the CBDC.
Back in April, there were news reports about the roll out of a wallet app in four cities of China, namely Chengdu, Shenzhen, Xiongan, and Suzhou, for trial of the digital yuan. China’s only stepped up the trial and roll out process of its digital currency during the pandemic.
Last month, Wang Zhong-min, ex-vice chair of the PBoC’s National Council for Social Security Fund, had revealed that China had finished the backend creation of CBDC. In March, the government began working on laws for overseeing it.