TL;DR Breakdown
- China wants McDonalds to speed up its digital yuan testing
- McDonald’s is testing the pilot digital yuan across 270 outlets
- China wants to launch its digital yuan by February 2021
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has now become something that every country wants to adopt. With China still, far ahead, the government makes various strides to ensure the launch happens on time. In this regard, China has urged McDonald’s, a fast-food chain, to increase the scope of its digital yuan testing scheme.
According to Financial Times, China wants the increase to happen before the beginning of the Winter Olympics. Presently, various outlets around the country have begun testing its digital currency. The launch of the digital yuan, also known as e-renminbi, is scheduled to take place in February 2022. Coincidentally, it is the same period that the Beijing Winter Olympics is expected to take place.
Nike and Visa also asked to increase their digital yuan testing
The pilot scheme has also seen about 270 Mcdonald’s stores across Shanghai accept the digital yuan as a means of payment. In the update released by F.T., the Chinese government has been mounting pressure on McDonald’s and other retailers to increase their digital yuan testing. Nike and Visa, other known retailers of the e-renminbi, have declined to state it. However, McDonald’s has mentioned through its spokesperson that Shanghai is still its pilot city. It also says that it is learning from the customer’s feedback.
China steps up plans to launch digital yuan
After it was proposed to the Senate in 2017, efforts to kick start the digital yuan have been brought to life. 2020 marked the turnaround in the developer’s actions as the digital yuan testing phase saw the People’s Bank of China airdrop massive amounts of the digital yuan to citizens. At the end of July, about 20 million individual wallets were set up.
Presently, the digital yuan is one of the digital currencies that is almost completed across the world. Like stablecoins, CBDC’s will be backed by physical currencies, but this time with backing from their respective countries. However, the major difference between them and digital assets is that their transactions are not available on public blockchains.
There appears to be a controversy surrounding the testing of the digital yuan in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. In the letter by the three U.S. legislators, they allege that the digital yuan can be “tracked and traced” by the People’s Bank of China. They also claim that the Chinese Communist Party could use the digital yuan to surveil visiting athletes during and after the sporting event. What’s your perception about this claim by the U.S. government?
