PBoC chief says more than 140 million people have digital yuan accounts

China’s experiments with the central bank digital currency (CBDC) show no signs of slowing as updated numbers for October 2021 were released at Hong Kong Fintech Week.

The digital yuan (e-CNY) was developed to replace cash in everyday transactions and is gaining interest among individuals and companies, according to Mu Changchun, director of the PBoC Digital Currency Institute. At the conference on Wednesday, Mu said the number of individual digital yuan accounts had reached 140 million, while companies had created another 10 million.

While the official launch date of e-CNY is still unclear, China has continued to expand the trial rollout to more than a dozen regions. With a wide range of utility, catering, transportation, retail and government service vendors accepting CBDCs, people spent 62 billion yuan ($ 9.7 billion) on CNY digital wallets in October 2021, according to Reuters .

The PBoC CEO has also detailed different types of e-CNY wallets. The basic wallet has an annual transaction limit of 50,000 yuan ($ 7,800) that only requires a phone number to activate. If users want to open an e-CNY wallet for unlimited transactions, they must go to a bank counter with ID.

Related: The French central bank’s blockchain-based CBDC pilot project for debt markets

China plans to completely replace cash payments with the digital yuan, and the country will continue to experiment in large cities from April 2020. China’s CBDC is regulated by the Chinese government, controls, tracks and registers smartphone apps.

A year ago at the same conference, PBoC Governor Yi Gang said the digital yuan pilot saw people spend 2 billion yuan ($ 299 million) on four million transactions in four cities. Last year’s numbers mean e-CNY’s trading volume has increased more than 3,000% in 12 months thanks to geographically expanding studies and the growing popularity of CBDCs.