Alibaba founder Jack Ma (third from the right) attends the opening ceremony of MYbank in Hangzhou, capital of China’s Zhejiang province.
Ju Huanzong | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
The online bank, backed by Alibaba’s fintech giant Ant Group, has joined China’s digital yuan pilot program, it said Monday, as tests in Beijing expand judgments aimed at deploying the currency electronics for mass use.
MYBank, an ant advocate, said it was one of the parties involved in research and development on China’s electronic currency. He plans to “advance the trial in accordance with the general agreement of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC),” a bank spokesman said.
The pilot pilot of digital currency of the central bank of China has so far been mainly public by state-owned banks, rather than privately owned banks.
WeBank, backed by Tencent Holdings, is also involved in the yuan digital pilot, the state-backed China Securities News reported in a Feb. 20 report, which also mentioned MYBank’s involvement. WeBank declined to comment.
MYbank and WeBank services will soon be introduced into PBOC’s yuan digital app, according to China Securities News and a screenshot of the app seen by Reuters. The electronic portfolios of the two privately owned providers will be similar to the functions offered by the six state-owned providers during the trial, the newspaper added.
China is a world leader in launching digital coins from central banks and has so far conducted national tests in several major cities, such as Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou.
So far, more than 2 billion yuan ($ 309.30 million) has been spent using China’s new digital currency in 4 million separate transactions, PBOC Governor Yi Gang told reporters in November.