At the beginning of 2022, as the Winter Olympics approached, the digital yuan, as a digital financial business card of this event, became popular again. The reporter noted that after the digital yuan pilot app was listed, only the Huawei app store had nearly 6 million installs in 7 days. The investor interaction area of many listed companies is also crowded with inquiries about whether the company has participated in the application of the digital yuan payment scenario of the Winter Olympic Games.
Foreigners can also open a digital RMB wallet with a foreign mobile phone number. The relevant person in charge of the Bank of China, the official banking partner of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympic Games, told reporters that the bank will provide full-process services such as wallet exchange, recharge and redemption at the Bank of China branch and contracted hotels at the Winter Olympics site, so as to achieve full product, full coverage and full life cycle application services within the security red line of the Winter Olympics. Earlier, the central bank revealed that the construction of the digital yuan Beijing Winter Olympic pilot scene has entered the sprint stage.
"The panoramic use of the digital yuan in the Winter Olympic Games can allow people from all over the world to fully feel the new achievements of China's digital economy, which will become a highlight of this Winter Olympic Games and will also promote China's financial technology to enter a higher stage of development." Digital yuan hardware product provider Unigroup Tongxin relevant people said. It is understood that the use of the digital yuan in the Winter Olympics scenario has been strictly tested, and many institutions involved in the construction of the payment scene have entered the market a few months ago.
Bank of China branches and digital yuan acceptance equipment. Photo: Photo by Liu Chang
The digital yuan app set off a boom in experience, with an app store installing nearly 6 million people in 7 days
Since the digital yuan pilot, the Winter Olympics have been among the first batch of pilot areas/scenarios. Near the opening, on January 4, the digital yuan pilot app launched on major app stores.
Compared with the previous need to be opened through channels such as red envelope winning and bank invitation, the pilot version has three obvious changes: first, the threshold is lowered, and the people in the pilot areas of "10+1" (Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi'an, Qingdao, Dalian and the Winter Olympics scene) are fully opened; second, the merchant sub-wallet collection, users can easily make digital RMB payments in different merchant consumption scenarios; third, China Merchants Bank and WeBank (WeChat Pay) have been added. In addition to the ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, Postal Savings, and Online Merchant Bank (Alipay), which have previously provided wallet services, all 9 operating institutions have been "lit up", and the number of daily high-frequency consumption scenario party apps has expanded to more than 50.
"Apps have been optimized and improved in terms of visual interaction, functional flow, and scalability." An authoritative person told the Beijing News shell financial reporter.
After the digital yuan app was launched, it set off an experience boom. The reporter saw from the app store that as of the evening of January 10, the Huawei store had downloaded 5.93 million times, less than 10,000 times on the first day of listing; the OPPO store had nearly 900,000 downloads, and only about 30,000 times on the first night of the listing. According to media reports, a number of platforms said that after the digital yuan pilot version of the App was launched, the number of new users who pushed the digital yuan wallet every day increased by more than 10 times.
Li Lihui, former president of the Bank of China, said in an interview with Shell Financial Reporter that the digital yuan needs to reach a certain market size in order to fully realize its social and commercial value. The premise of scale has two keys, one is to optimize the underlying technical architecture and achieve large-scale and reliable applications; the other is to develop and build rich application scenarios to integrate the digital yuan into all aspects of people's daily lives.
He said that the most prominent advantage of Internet companies is that they have hundreds of millions of users and high-frequency C-end use scenarios, so they can introduce the digital yuan into a variety of application scenarios. After the digital yuan pilot version of the app was launched, a number of Internet companies have officially announced the new application of the digital yuan, such as Meituan announcing that it can use the digital yuan to pay for daily takeaway orders, and JD.com announced that third-party merchants can access the digital yuan system.
The construction of the pilot scene of the Winter Olympics has been accelerated, and the participants have entered the field for testing a few months ago
The digital yuan app attached to the mobile phone, called "soft wallet" in the jargon, is currently directly available to the people in the pilot areas. "Hard wallet" away from the use of mobile phones, has been publicly displayed in the form of media including card hard wallets, bracelets, employee work cards, etc., a major intention of the design is to provide the possibility of using digital yuan for people who have difficulty using smart terminals, and has not yet been promoted on a large scale.
"Bank of China will provide full-process services such as exchange, recharge and redemption of soft wallets and hard wallets at the Winter Paralympic Games. The hard wallet is divided into two forms: card type and bracelet, and will launch the Winter Olympics-themed digital RMB hard wallet. The relevant person in charge of the Bank of China introduced it to reporters.
How do I open a hard wallet? According to reports, the Bank of China has set up self-service exchange machines at the outlets of the Winter Paralympic Games, using multi-currency banknote recognition technology, which can automatically handle the one-way exchange business of personal foreign currency cash exchange digital RMB hard wallet or RMB cash. When redeeming, the self-service exchange machine is converted according to the real-time settlement rate.
In addition, the bank will also be equipped with machines to accept digital yuan at the winter Paralympic Games site and all sales points of the contracted hotels, and customers can pay by scanning the code and touching it.
In fact, during the service trade fair held in September last year, other state-owned banks also appeared with foreign currency exchange digital yuan machines, which have not yet been released to the public. It can be seen that although the implementation of closed-loop management, the beijing Winter Olympics related payment services, digital yuan pilot scenario construction and other work have long been promoted.
According to the central bank, as of November last year, the scenes in the Park of the Winter Olympic Organizing Committee of the Beijing Competition District have all been completed, the construction of the digital yuan acceptance environment within the security red line of the Winter Olympics has been promoted simultaneously with the construction of venues, and the seven major scenarios outside the security red line of the Winter Olympics, such as transportation, catering and accommodation, shopping and consumption, tourism and tourism, medical and health, communication services, and ticketing and entertainment have been fully covered.
In the Zhangjiakou competition area, the payment scene within the security red line of the Winter Olympics is basically fully covered.
It is reported that the use of the digital yuan in the Winter Olympics scenario has been strictly tested, and many institutions involved in the construction of the payment scene have entered the market a few months ago. "We started intensive testing in October 2021, and the preparations started earlier and began in August and September." A relevant person in charge of a hardware manufacturer revealed.
There are many technical highlights behind the wallet, and the ambassador to China is "eager to try"
China's mobile payment is leading in the world, but also due to the early popularization, many users feel that the changes in the digital economy represented by the digital yuan are not obvious, in fact, there are many technical highlights behind it.
For example, you can open a digital RMB wallet with only one mobile phone number, behind which is the account loose coupling design, while WeChat Alipay is closely coupled account, that is to say, to bind the bank account. The reporter's test found that the wallet opened with a mobile phone number on the digital yuan pilot app is "four types of wallets", the upper limit of payment limit is relatively low, and users can upgrade the wallet to one, two or three categories by adding identity information and binding bank cards.
According to the relevant person in charge of the Bank of China mentioned above, overseas mobile phone numbers can also open four types of wallets that can be controlled and anonymous through the digital YUAN App downloaded in China, and can be exchanged for digital yuan with cash and wild cards. Before leaving China, the digital yuan can be exchanged for physical cash in RMB at the manual counter of the Bank of China branch in the "10+1" pilot area, and then converted into foreign currency banknotes and carried out of the country in accordance with China's foreign affairs control policy.
In addition to the App soft wallet, the hard wallet is also one of the highlights of the digital yuan, the essence of which is that it has a hardware security unit, which is safe, convenient and fully protects personal privacy. The reporter learned from the industry that product providers include Hengbao, Unigroup Tongxin, etc., and some hardware manufacturers have also brought related products to appear during the service trade fair held in September last year.
According to unigroup Tongxin, the company provides hard wallet solutions for the application scenarios of the digital yuan for the Winter Olympics, and can realize applications on devices such as multi-form hard wallets and collection terminals. The scheme has been securely certified.
Expatriates are also paying a lot of attention to the digital yuan. Knowing that the Beijing Winter Olympics will promote the pilot application of the digital yuan, Guyana's ambassador to China Zhou Yaxin told the media that he is "eager to try".
The relevant person in charge of the central bank revealed that the digital yuan Beijing Winter Olympics scene pilot fully respects the user's payment habits, and will provide cash, digital yuan, bank card payment and other payment methods for domestic and foreign consumers to choose.
The Winter Olympics is an important area of the digital yuan pilot, and the design and use will continue to improve in the future. Yi Gang, governor of the central bank, previously said that according to the pilot situation, it will further improve the settlement efficiency and privacy protection functions, enhance the inclusiveness and availability of the digital yuan, and promote the interaction between the digital yuan and the existing electronic payment tools.
Beijing News shell financial reporter Cheng Weimiao Editor Chen Li Proofreader Jia Ning
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