China starts its digital yuan testing program and the US giants like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Subway are among the participants.
Since China is at the finish line of building its own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the American fast-food benchmark is announced to be among the participants who will be testing the new digital coin.
McDonald’s together with Starbucks and Subway chains in China are the main foreign names on the list of merchants that agreed to try the digital version of traditional currency in small transactions, the local media reports.
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All three chains will be accepting digital yuan on the local scale only. Meaning that no McDonalds, located in New York or L.A. will participate in the pilot project. Unfortunately, none of the three US companies have not commented on the news.
According to the report, 19 small and medium-sized businesses like hotels, stores, book stores, gyms and bakeries also participate in the trial program. The testing will be done in four Chinese cities including Shenzhen, Xiong’an, Chengdu and Suzhou. It is official that testing starts in May in Suzhou and will continue from 6 to 12 months.
China’s digital yuan program
The country’s central banks or The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has been developing local digital currency for over a few years already. However, it is not clear yet when the digital yuan will be officially released.
Digital yuan would be the digital version of the national currency, however, not a cryptocurrency as it will be a centralized coin and will be issued by the local government. Digital yuan will be backed 1:1 with China’s local yuan and will be available through a digital wallet application.
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The purpose of national digital currency, as claim Chinese officials, is to make digital payments more simple and also faster, as the existing system is too slow. It is also known that Chinese CBDC will be available for daily commercial usage as well as for internal bank transfers.
