The head of the People's Bank of China, Yi Gang, revealed that since the pilot began a year and a half ago, nearly $250 billion worth of transactions have been conducted using China's digital yuan. As of the end of June, the central bank's digital currency transaction volume reached 1.8 trillion yuan. During this period, approximately 120 million wallets made around 950 million transactions, with an average transaction value of about $260.
However, the adoption of the digital yuan remains relatively small compared to China's vast population of 1.4 billion. It currently accounts for just 0.16% of China's money supply, with about $2.3 billion, or 16.5 billion digital renminbi, in circulation. So far, the digital yuan has mainly been used for domestic retail payments, with only some pilots in Hong Kong exploring its cross-border application.
In an effort to further promote the cross-border application of digital renminbi, the Bank of China Hong Kong started trialing a cross-border payment scheme for its customers at selected retail stores in Hong Kong. This marks the third cross-border pilot of central ban k digital currencies (CBDCs) in Hong Kong. Last year, Bank of China Hong Kong ran a pilot program that rewarded customers with $14 (100 yuan) for setting up a BOC e-renminbi wallet to spend at a Hong Kong supermarket chain called U Select.
To expand the use cases of the digital yuan, the central bank integrated smart contract functionality into the system in January. The recent $250 billion digital yuan transaction volume represents a significant increase of over 70% from the figure cited by the bank in August 2022 . However, it is important to note that this value is still far below the transaction volume processed by some of the largest public blockchains in the world.
