Men wearing face masks walk past a Gap store in a shopping district, while the country is hit by an outbreak of the new coronavirus in Beijing, China on February 7, 2020.
Jason Lee | Reuters
BEIJING – The capital of China will hand out approximately $ 1.5 million in a limited trial of the central bank’s digital currency, the municipal government announced this weekend.
That is the third major test of the digital currency under development by the People’s Bank of China. The cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou have conducted similar experiments in recent months.
In this trial, Beijing said it will select 50,000 from a pool of applicants to receive 200 yuan, or about $ 30 each, in the digital currency. Recipients can spend the money in designated offline locations or on areas of e-commerce site JD.com during the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday.
The city of Beijing is launching a test of the PBoC’s digital currency during the Lunar New Year 2021, as evidenced by a screenshot of a login page on JD’s shopping app.
Evelyn Cheng | CNBC
The vouchers are valid from February 10 to February 17. The digital currency test is only accessible to people with a Chinese ID number or residence permits from Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan.
The People’s Bank of China has developed a digital currency that is expected to work in the same way as transactions through existing payment apps. Mobile payments, mainly through Tencent’s Alibaba-affiliated Alipay app and Wechat Pay, have replaced cash as the predominant form of consumer payment in China in recent years.
Unlike well-known digital currencies like bitcoin, the one being developed by China’s central bank is controlled by a single power, rather than a decentralized system run by users around the world.