China Launches Smart-Contract Functionality on Digital Yuan Through E-Commerce App Meituan

• Blockchain Council
• September 17, 2024

The digital yuan (eCNY), the central bank’s digital currency, has undergone updates that give it smart contract capabilities and some recently disclosed use scenarios.

As per a January 17 statement by regional bitcoin media site 8btc, the Meituan app, a Chinese app that offers retail and food delivery services, has started using smart contracts.

A smart contract is triggered whenever a Meituan user places a purchase and pays with one’s e-CNY wallet. It then searches for keywords and the items they have bought in one’s order. A user enters a drawing to win a portion of a reward if they purchase something out of the keywords listed during the day.

A portion of a “red envelope,” and hongbao in Chinese terminology, comprising 8,888 yuan, or just over $1,300, is the reward.

It customarily used small packets called “hongbao” to give money as a sign of good fortune during the Chinese New Year.

A tool allowing individuals to send virtual red envelopes was added to an e-CNY wallet app in December to increase usage before the Chinese New Year on January 22.

Digital Yuan Has New Apps

New applications for the e-CNY have been added recently in addition to the most recent development.

According to a China Securities Journal article from January 16, e-CNY was first used to purchase securities. Additionally, investors can use the CBDC to buy stocks through the Soochow Securities mobile app.

According to a January 11 Yicai Global report, users of the digital yuan wallet app can now utilize their Android phones to perform contactless payments even when their device is not linked to the internet with electricity.

The development of new apps for the digital yuan comes as China struggles to increase CBDC use.

Only one former PBOC worker acknowledged in public for the first time in December that the digital yuan had “limited usage” and had turned “quite passive,” adding that ‘the results are also not acceptable.’

The CBDC was shown to make up about 0.13% of the 10.47 trillion yuan ($1.54 trillion) in circulation at the end of 2022 after the PBOC, for the first time, included e-CNY in currency circulating data on January 10.

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