The leadership of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) reported that more than $300,000 in e-CNY payments are made daily at the Beijing Olympiad.
Mu Changchun, director general of the research institute, said that foreign visitors are more likely to use the digital yuan than local residents.
“I have a rough idea that there are two or more million transactions in the digital yuan every day, but I don’t have exact numbers yet,” the NII CEO explained.
Changchun added that although there is no exact data on the number of completed transactions yet, it is noticeable that local residents prefer traditional payment services more.
“It seems that all foreign users use hardware wallets,” the head of the research institute said, referring to e-CNY cards, which look like bank payment cards without a chip and a magnetic stripe. Software wallets, according to him, are used mainly by users from China.
To provide access to the digital yuan for guests and staff of the Olympiad, the People’s Bank of China installed several cryptomats at the main competition venues. Foreign currency banknotes can be converted through a cryptomat into digital or fiat yuan.
The availability of the digital yuan at the Beijing Olympics has already raised cybersecurity and data protection concerns among regulators and law enforcement.
Recall that the number of transactions in the digital yuan at the Winter Olympic Games 2022 exceeded the number of payments through Visa. At the same time, many sellers were outside the “quarantine zone”, outside of which they try not to let foreigners. Last week, a pilot version of the official digital yuan wallet became the most downloaded smartphone app in local mobile app stores. This has happened in less than a week since the developers of the wallet released its pilot version for free access for iOS and Android users.
Source: Bits
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