A former official of the People\u2019s Bank of China (PBOC), the country\u2019s central bank, has expressed disappointment that China\u2019s digital yuan is seeing little use.<\/p>\n
Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director and current finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China\u2019s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference, according to a Dec. 28 Caixin report.<\/p>\n
Xie noted that cumulative digital yuan transactions had only crossed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after launch. \u201cThe results are not ideal,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cusage has been low, highly inactive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the government\u2019s rapid expansion of the trials and new wallet features to try to attract users, a January PBOC report stated that only 261 million users had set up an e-CNY wallet. <\/p>\n
This compares to around 903.6 million people that utilize mobile payments in China, according to a 2021 China UnionPay report.<\/p>\n
The former central banker said the use case of e-CNY \u201cneeds to be changed\u201d from its current use as a cash substitute and opened to other uses such as the ability to pay for financial products or connected to more payment platforms to boost adoption.<\/p>\n
He compared the digital yuan to other third-party payment systems in the country such as WeChat Pay, Alipay, and QQ Wallet, which allow for investments, lending or loans. He said they \u201chave formed a payment market structure that has met needs for daily consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some third-party financial apps are e-CNY compatible but see little use, as Xie said \u201cpeople are used to\u201d using the original service and change \u201cis difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such criticism of Chinese government initiatives is rare from former officials and signals the country may be seriously struggling to gain traction on its CBDC initiative.<\/p>\n