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According to the Reuters report, China will continue to advance the development of its central bank digital currency and improve its design, the People’s Bank of China governor Yi Gang said on Tuesday. China is a front-runner in the global race to launch central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and is testing a digital yuan, or eCNY, in major cities including Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai but has not set a timetable for its official rollout.
“We will continue to prudently advance R&D of eCNY, improve its design and use,” PBoC governor.
“Going forward, we will continue to prudently advance R&D of eCNY, improve its design and use,” Yi said via video at a Bank of Finland event. Yi added that China would improve eCNY’s privacy protection and anti-counterfeiting feature and increase its interoperability with existing payments tools. China will test eCNY’s impact on its monetary policy and financial markets, he added.
eCNY aims to meet the need for domestic retail payments.
People’s Bank of China’s governor also said that eCNY aims to meet the need of domestic retail payments as cross-border digital payments involve more complicated issues, such as anti-money laundering. China has been working on its national bank digital currency for more than half a decade and has run several successful pilot programs in many major cities over the last year. Not on PBoC, but central banks around the world are actively working on CBDCs in some capacity. As reported earlier, the digital Euro is being tested by the European Central Bank.
