The digital currency (CBDC) issued by the People's Bank of China is called "e-CNY" or digital RMB, and some people call it "digital currency Electronic Payment" (DCEP).
After years of development, the People's Bank of China began to promote digital RMB by airdrop last year.
By the end of March, six state-owned financial institutions had applied for digital RMB wallets. At present, JD.COM and Alibaba have started to cooperate with the central bank, and some employees in JD.COM have been paid in the form of digital RMB.
The report also pointed out that JD.COM began to implement it in June+10, 5438. This is not the first time that JD.COM has promoted digital RMB. In the previous airdrop activities, the airdropped digital RMB can be used to buy goods on the platform.
Alibaba has been involved in the project for a long time, and the central bank and Ant Financial have been cooperating to promote digital RMB.
A media report shows that Tencent and Ant have been strengthening the construction of CBDC for the past three years. In addition to cooperation, ants have also opened their own databases. Ant Group also migrated from the original database to the newly developed database service and mobile development platform mPaaS in June 2020.
It was reported every day in March that the head of the central bank once said that the digital RMB would not be completely anonymous, but it would provide privacy protection.
Francis Lun, CEO of Hong Kong Geo Securities Ltd: In this case, it is difficult to obtain data privacy protection.
JD.COM, Ant and Tencent are all major players in digital RMB, but now MasterCard wants to join. The South China Morning Post reported in detail that MasterCard hopes to help complete cross-border transactions through digital RMB.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, the co-president of MasterCard Asia Pacific said that the payment company is waiting for the approval of the regulatory authorities, so that it can conduct domestic business through digital RMB. MasterCard is already cooperating with the Central Bank of Bahamas, because the Caribbean islands recently issued a sovereign digital currency called "Shaqian".
In 2020, the People's Bank of China approved MasterCard's application to use digital RMB. At present, the payment company is further cooperating with the regulatory authorities to obtain relevant licenses.
MasterCard Asia-Pacific Director said: "Once we get the license, our first task is to help people understand us and further enter the mainland market."