A traditional Chinese way of gifting money that’s gone virtual with the rise of digital payments has been introduced into the digital yuan wallet app.
China’s wallet app for its digital yuan central bank digital currency (CBDC) introduced a feature for users to send cash in an electronic version of traditional “red packets” to do to draw in new users.
The new feature was released over the weekend, around one month ahead of the Chinese New Year on January. 22, as reported by the South China Morning Post on Dec. 26.
The “red packets,” known as hongbao in China, are historically used for gifting money round the Chinese New Year and alternative celebrations as a gesture of good luck. The rising use of digital payments has seen virtual red envelopes offered by popular native services like WeChat Pay and Alipay.
Reportedly, the e-CNY app permits a red packet to be sent to only one person, or a “lucky draw” will be found out for a bunch of individuals WHO can get a random quantity from a pool of funds, each WeChat Pay and Alipay have a similar feature.
Users will opt for a packet cowl that displays well needs for the yr or birthdays in addition as needs for a “prosperous China.”
Digital yuan transactions crossed the $14 billion (100 billion yuan) threshold on October. 10, seeing an increase of solely 14 July since the $12 billion (87.6 billion yuan) rumored at the top of 2021 by the People’s Bank of China.
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A Dec.18 report within the Chinese Workers’ Daily newspaper rumored the e-CNY trails can expand to the cities of Jinan, Nanning, Fangchenggang and Kunming. The trials antecedently distended in September to four of the country’s provinces, as well as its most inhabited, Guangdong.
Despite the government’s fast expansion of the trials, the newest reported user base of the e-CNY wallets was in January 2022, with 261 million users have found out a digital wallet.
China’s government might apparently need to leverage WeChat Pay and Alipay to spice up the adoption of its digital yuan.
Both services settle for e-CNY, with WeChat reportedly having 1.3 monthly active users within the September quarter, in line with financial reports, whereas Alipay had over one billion annual active users in its August ending Aug. 17, 2020.
(JESSE COGHLAN, Cointelegraph, 2022)