- One of China’s populous cities, Jinan, in Shandong Province has implemented digital yuan payment accross its bus routes.
- This is after successful piloting on two routes, paving way for full commercialization and incentives to early adopters.
- This can be seen as a strategy in China’s push towards a cashless society.
If you live in the Chinese City of Jinan, you can now use the innovative central bank digital currency (CBDC) to pay for fares on any of the area’s buses.
This is after a successful pilot on two bus lines and an update to software and card readers across Jinan Public Transport’s bus network according to the Chinese News website.
The Transport company; Jinan Public Transport Group has added digital yuan as a payment means for bus fares and they made this announcement on July 1st.
In order to encourage adoption, passengers using the new digital currency will receive a heavy incentive, as the price has been discounted from 1.99 yuan to 0.01 yuan per ticket.
Jinan is a big city with almost 7 million citizens who will now be able to use digital yuan wallets provided by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).
This is a clear sign that China is serious on its migration to the digital currency. The city of Jinan is taking a leap into the future, and it has demonstrated this by upgrading all its card readers and bus route software.
Their change management process is also laudable as they are combining incentive with tech innovation to drive adoption, encouraging change by building public’s confidence.
It is a national movement
The digital push is not only limited to the City of Jinan, another city, Changshu has digitised salaries of the civil servants in all public service, public institutions and state-owned units, while Ningbo Rail Transit implemented digital yuan payments for their sub-way tickets.
Beyond the national border, the CBDC has been integrated into Belt and Road initiatives and cross-border trades; this can be seen in the city of Xuzhou , which is a key strategic location serving as a launch point for trains carrying goods to Europe.
In June, the Shanghai Clearing House included support for digital yuan for payments and settlements of commodities.
More recently the French bank BNP Paribas and the Bank of China (BOC) signed a partnership which will encourage the use of digital Yuan for real-time transactions.
The successful pilot of digital use in the transport sector in the CIty of Jinan, is a strong and bold move that signifies a revolution coming into the financial sector. China and indeed the city of Jinan wants to be on the right side when the history of a cashless society is written.
Whilst experts may argue that digital Yuan’s usage has not picked up due to alternative and more widely accepted digital wallets like Wechat and Alipay, the PBOC is focusing its energy on integrating Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC) with these existing digital currencies.
Both Wechat and Alibaba Group’s Alipay have announced integration with the digital yuan in their payment services paving the way for billions of users on their platforms to have access to this payment service.
