“Chinese mobile payment platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay have begun allowing users to withdraw money online through credit card cash advances by cooperating with some banks, such as Bank of Ningbo, China Everbright Bank and Ping An Bank. Industry experts said the move will help raise the number of credit cards in use, make credit card users more active, and increase banks’ business volume. They also called for more efforts to strengthen supervision of the use of funds after withdrawal. The new function is now being tested on a limited scale. The amount of money that can be withdrawn from banks and at what interest rate is determined by the banks, and both Alipay and WeChat Pay will provide the service for free, according to the platforms’ service agreements.”

“Several Chinese cities have started using e-CNY payment methods in their public transport system as part of the next phase of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot testing. According to a local report by Quinjia, Guangzhou Public Transport has launched the payment method for use in paying bus fares. The city now provides e-CNY QR payment codes that users can scan to pay using the CBDC wallet app.”

“The test version of China’s digital yuan payment app can now be linked to bank card accounts following an update yesterday. The new feature ensures that funds in the e-yuan wallet never run dry, industry insiders told Yicai Global. The app can automatically draw amounts from a linked account at a commercial bank when the e-yuan wallet’s balance is not enough, the sources said. Users also have the option not to link the app to a bank account.”

“According to local news outlet Sohu.com, on Tuesday, the state-owned Bank of China announced a new program to bridge primary school education with smart contracts. In a combined partnership with local education and financial authorities, parents residing in the city of Chengdu, located in China’s Sichuan province, will be able to enroll their children in after-school or extracurricular lessons using the digital yuan central bank digital currency, or e-CNY. Under the pilot test, parents start by paying a deposit to a private educational entity for a series of lessons. Afterward, a smart contract binds each lesson on a pro-rata basis to the deposit. This way, should their children miss a lesson, the e-CNY payment is automatically credited back to their account via smart contract.”

“In three years of experiments, China’s central bank has made significant progress in developing its central currency. Total transactions since late 2019 reached 83 billion yuan (S$16.8 billion) as of the end of May. Nearly 4.6 million merchants across China have come to accept the digital yuan, known as the e-CNY, as payment. People have used it for shopping, dining, personal finance and business uses such as paying taxes and employees. For all that, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) still has a long way to go in its digital currency project…Currently, the e-CNY is being tested in 23 cities and regions in 15 provinces and provincial-level cities.”

“China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot testing continues to onboard new use cases for the digital yuan. The country has now recorded its first instance of Intellectual Property (IP) financing on the CBDC platform. The Rural Commerce Bank of Zhangjiagang, located in China’s Suzhou province, has issued the first-ever digital yuan loan backed by intellectual property as collateral. In a press release, the Suzhou Market Supervision Bureau confirmed that a loan of 500,000 yuan (about $74,000) was issued to an unnamed business to fill its capital turnover gap…The loans go directly to the users’ digital yuan wallet, can be repaid via the CBDC platform, and allows for regulators to track illicit use as well as monitor fund flows for better policymaking.”

“Eight years after China first embarked on the path toward a digital yuan, the central bank’s pilot program for the digital yuan has been expanded to 23 cities covering nearly a fifth of the population. But a full launch of the currency remains elusive as a population already used to mobile payments such as Alipay and WeChatPay sees no reason to abandon their familiar apps.”

“China will fully respect privacy and protect personal information in using the digital yuan, state media quoted a senior central bank official as saying on Sunday, as Beijing encourages greater adoption of e-CNY. Limited anonymity is a key feature of the digital yuan, Mu Changchun, director-general of the central bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute said, noting it ensures reasonable anonymous transactions.  “On the other hand, it also prevents and combats illegal activities including money laundering, terrorist financing and tax evasion, maintaining the need for financial security,” the Securities Times quoted Mu as saying at a forum.”

“Chinese social media giant Tencent Holdings plans to shut down its non-fungible token (NFT) platform, which launched just one year ago, as Beijing’s strict ban on secondary markets for digital collectibles has largely killed its business potential, according to a report by Chinese media outlet Jiemian on Wednesday. The report, which quoted unidentified sources from Tencent, said that Huanhe, the unit that mints and distributes blockchain-based digital collectibles, will close as soon as this week.”

“According to data obtained from local news outlet Sohu.com, the Shenzhen Chamber of Commerce has recorded over 2.6 million signups for its latest digital yuan, or e-CNY, airdrop. Two months prior, the City of Shenzhen announced that it would be airdropping 30 million of the e-CNY central bank digital currency, or CBDC, to local residents to stimulate consumer spending as a recovery measure to the country’s strict coronavirus lockdown.”

“Shanghai residents can use China’s digital currency, the e-CNY, to take the Metro from Friday in an effort to further expand its presence in people’s daily lives. Through Metro Daduhui, the official app of the city’s subway operator Shentong, commuters will be able to pay their fares with the digital wallets of several major domestic banks. These include the Bank of Communication, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China and China Construction Bank. To promote the new digital scenario, the first 10,000 e-CNY users will be rewarded with certain discounts every day through September 15. They only need to pay a cent for a 4-yuan Metro ticket, or enjoy a 4-yuan deduction.”

“Chinese internet and tech giants on Monday signed an initiative to ban cryptocurrency and digital collectibles (NFTs), along with a promise not to establish secondary marketplaces. According to the South China Morning Post, Tencent and Ant Group joined a self-driven industry initiative to ban cryptocurrency and fight speculation.”

“Application scenarios for the e-CNY, China’s digital currency, will increase further as two-way e-cash flows will be made more accessible with the expected introduction of novel automated teller machines. Information from the China National Intellectual Property Administration showed the patent for the e-CNY ATM was announced on June 28. When such ATMs become ubiquitous, users can complete making deposits and withdrawals of the digital yuan under better security conditions, experts said….In late June, China Minsheng Banking Corp became the first commercial bank in the country to allow its corporate customers to pay wages in the e-CNY….The e-CNY application is now promoted in 23 Chinese cities, which represents substantial progress since the low-key launch of trials in April 2020.”

“Chinese President Xi Jinping chaired a top-level meeting on Wednesday that approved a plan for the healthy development of China’s large payment firms and fintech sector, state media reported. The meeting outlined that China will step up the supervision of large payment firms to ward off systemic financial risks and will support platform companies in servicing the real economy, state news agency Xinhua said, without giving details.”

“When China announced in 2019 that it was working on its own national digital currency, there was widespread speculation about what role, if any, blockchain would play in a digital yuan, or e-CNY. One reason for this was that news of the digital yuan came just after Facebook announced its own digital currency called Libra, later renamed Diem and killed after its assets were sold off. While the warning signs of regulatory hurdles facing Facebook were apparent from the beginning, it was not clear three years ago that Facebook, one of the world’s largest tech companies, would fail. So Beijing moved up its timeline to launch the e-CNY…While the digital yuan attracted broad attention with comparisons to blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, the reality is that CBDCs are almost as different from each other as bitcoin is from the cash in your bank account.”

“Chinese financial-technology giant Ant Group Co. on Monday launched a digital bank in Singapore that will serve small businesses in the city-state, expanding the company’s footprint outside of China. Anext Bank, a wholly owned Ant subsidiary incorporated in Singapore, has started operations and will provide digital financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises, targeting those that engage in cross-border transactions.”

“Republican senators plan to unveil a bill that would bar U.S. app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China’s digital currency, according to a copy of proposed legislation seen by Reuters.   The concern is the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans. The bill is backed by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun and states that companies that own or control app stores “shall not carry or support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY.”

“The tech-savvy people of China will now be able to enjoy a more convenient life in Guangzhou, where public transport tickets can be purchased via China’s digital yuan app. China is the country that first issued a digital version its national currency. It will now be offered in 23 cities. Because it is digital currency issued by central banks (CBDC), digital yuan belongs to the bank. The currency can be used by some Chinese commercial banks, but they will need to be issued a license from the Central Bank.”

“Paysend , the card-to-card pioneer and international payments platform, today announces a technology partnership with Tencent Financial Technology, the fintech arm of world-leading internet and technology company Tencent, that will enable people receive money through Weixin, the PRC version of WeChat targeting users in mainland China. Under the partnership, Paysend will enable users to send money across borders through licensed banks in China, with the funds reaching bank accounts linked to the Weixin app.”

“One of China’s biggest mobile payment platforms, WeChat Pay, is apparently cooperating with several national financial institutions to further promote openness and interoperability among the digital payment industry. The news comes as regulators have urged private financial service providers in China to open up their platforms or face penalties. According to Chinese media , WeChat will work together with several central-bank-backed financial institutions to promote a more open payment ecosystem.”

“The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has punished 1,436 banks and payment institutions and issued fines totaling 1.13 billion yuan ($176 million) since 2016, said Fan Yifei, the Deputy Governor of PBoC at the 10th China Payment and Clearing Forum held at the end of September. In addition, the PBoC has guided 22 payment institutions to voluntarily withdraw from the market, refused to renew 17 payment institutions, and revoked the business licenses of two payment institutions that seriously violated regulations.”

“Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co , beset by US trade sanctions that have weakened its core smartphone business , has started to ramp up operations of its mobile payments service after acquiring a nationwide licence. This development enhances Huawei’s position, according to analysts, to become one of the major third-party digital payments providers in China, the world’s biggest smartphone and internet market.”

“Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said it will follow a regulatory order to unblock online links after China’s industry ministry ordered internet companies to open up their platforms to each other, signalling the demise of Big Tech’s “walled gardens”. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has been giving guidance to internet companies as they conduct self-rectification measures to unblock external website links, and will continue to push the companies to eventually solve the problem through different steps and phases, Zhao Zhiguo, MIIT spokesman and director general of the ministry’s Information and Communications Management Bureau, said at a press conference on Monday.”

“Beijing plans to break up Ant Group’s Alipay and create a separate app for the fintech giant’s loans business, according to a Financial Times report on Monday . Regulators previously ordered Ant to split the businesses of AliPay from lending businesses Huabei and Jiebei. They now want the credit businesses to be split into an independent app as well, according to the FT.   According to the plan, Ant will turn over user data underpinning loan decisions to a new credit scoring joint venture, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the process. The JV will be partly state-owned, the report said.”

“Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are considering moves to gradually open up their services to one another, as Beijing’s tech crackdown makes it harder for China’s two online giants to maintain the virtual barriers they have built in recent years. That would mark a big shift for China’s consumer internet, which has largely split into two camps built around the arch rivals. The restrictions mean, for example, that customers can’t use Tencent’s payment system to buy goods on an Alibaba platform. Now, both companies are separately working on plans to loosen those curbs, according to people familiar with the matter. The system could make life more convenient for consumers—and help spur greater competition—but will also mean the duo will have more insight into each other’s businesses.”

“China is reining in the ability of the country’s internet giants to use big data for lending, money-management and similar businesses, ending an era of rapid growth that authorities said posed dangers for the financial system. On Thursday, China’s central bank and other regulators ordered 13 firms, including many of the biggest names in the technology sector, to adhere to much tighter regulation of their data and lending practices.”