Almost 490,000 Vendors in China’s Changsha Accept Digital Yuan Payments

Nearly 490,000 vendors in China’s Changsha now accept digital yuan payments, the city’s government has claimed as the nation’s CBDC pilot continues.

Per the Changsha Evening News (via Huasheng Online), this year has seen Changsha expand its digital yuan use-case scenarios “into key areas such as government services, public transportation, inclusive finance, and rural revitalization projects.”

The city said that as of August 31 data, 487,300 brick-and-mortar stores and service providers in the city had begun accepting digital yuan payments.

The city said almost 22 million digital yuan wallets had been opened in Changsha, along with 862,100 corporate wallets.

It claimed that a total of 83.7324 million digital yuan transactions had been carried out in Changsha, for a transaction value of $1.9 billion.

The same media report claimed that city residents had already begun using the central bank’s official and recently updated digital yuan app to make utilities bill payments.

The bank this month added direct e-CNY payment options to its app.

These allow citizens in the pilot zone to pay energy bills, settle water payments, and top up their mobile phone plans directly from the app’s interface.

The media outlet quoted a female Changsha resident surnamed Hu as stating that she had this week settled a phone bill worth around $6.86 directly from the central bank’s app.

Hu claimed the app made payments “very convenient.”

Changsha, China Claims More Digital Yuan Landmarks

The city has been one of the nation’s most zealous in its CBDC adoption drives.

It was added to the pilot zone following a November 2020 announcement.

In February this year, city authorities claimed 300,000 merchants in the city were processing e-CNY payments.

Changsha followed up with an April announcement that this number had risen to 420,000.

During the 2023 #CIFTIS, the Shijingshan District Government and Bank of #Beijing signed a contract with eight institutions to jointly build e-CNY sci-fi application scenarios and further explore new directions of piloting e-CNY in Beijing. pic.twitter.com/7x3yvRsocp

— Touch Beijing (@touch_beijing) September 14, 2023

Earlier this month, the city of Shenzhen announced its intention to give out CBDC tokens to some 50,000 of its residents as part of another e-CNY adoption push.