(Bloomberg) —
China has increased the number of individuals with digital yuan accounts to 140 million, with 10 million corporate accounts created, a top official at the People’s Bank of China said.
Transactions in e-CNY, as the currency is known, reached 62 billion yuan ($9.7 billion) in trials rolled out in about a dozen regions, Mu Changchun, head of the PBOC’s Digital Currency Institute, said at the Hong Kong Fintech Week conference on Wednesday. The volume of transactions totaled 150 million.
He also made the following comments:
- Digital yuan operators can open four types of e-wallets for customers. The least privileged only requires a phone number, so would be anonymous even to the PBOC. Daily transaction values for this type of e-wallet holder would be capped at 5,000 yuan, with an annual cap of 50,000 yuan
- The highest privileged e-wallet would need to be opened at a bank counter with personal identification, with no transaction cap
- He reiterated that these e-wallets would collect less transaction information than traditional digital payment services. The PBOC would not provide the information to any third-party or other government agencies unless stipulated by the law
By the end of June, China had more than 24 million individual and enterprise users with e-CNY wallets, with transactions worth about 34.5 billion yuan, the central bank said at the time.
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