China’s Digital Currency to Roll-Out In A Second City After Successful Trials In Shenzhen

On Monday, local Chinese media The Paper reported that the district of Suzhou in Xiangcheng would launch a lottery to give away the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in a bid to test the real-use cases of the digital currency. The ‘red envelop’ lottery is set to launch on December 12th across the city, a date known as Double 12 across China, and an end-year shopping festival.

The report said the lottery would be released similar to the one carried out in the city of Shenzhen in mid-October. In Shenzhen, the endeavor was a highly successful one, with over 50,000 participants winning 200 digital yuan each – totaling approximately $1.5 million. A later report confirms that over 95% of the digital yuan distributed were used in two weeks, stretching to over 3000 stores that accept the digital currency.

The city was chosen given the large prevalence of installed near-field communication (NFC) and QR code point-of-sales across merchant stores. Suzhou’s DC/EP trial is also set to introduce several new features not used in Shenzhen’s trial phase, such as the offline payment feature and the smartphone touch functions.

China’s DC/EP project will also launch a trial in Chengdu, which is preparing in anticipation by installing the NFC and QR codes point-of-sales. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) also announced plans to launch the DC/EP project in the Winter Olympics venue in 2022.