The Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC) now appears to be gathering momentum.

The Chinese ride-hailing megacorp, DiDi Chuxing, has agreed to collaborate with the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) on the DCEP – the CBDC under development by China. (Coin Telegraph)

According to another report, Meituan, the major eCommerce service platform with over 240 million consumers and five million local merchants, as well as video-sharing site Bilibilibili, has begun to cooperate with banks developing the digital yuan.

Meanwhile, Chinese media giant ByteDance, the owner of the ubiquitous TikTok short video app, is also in discussions with banks regarding collaboration on the Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) project.

Dailyalts.com reported earlier that The Agriculture Bank of China was testing a mobile app relating to the Chinese digital currency or DCEP.

DCEP, the Chinese CBDC, most advanced

Financial circles recognize that globally, China is the most ahead in the development of its national digital currency. The Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) also acknowledged this in a report dated June 30.

“China seems likely to have a clear first-mover advantage in its adoption of CBDCs, both in terms of timing and usage,” the Bank of America analysts wrote, according to CoinDesk.

A digital yuan, or DCEP, could increase the Chinese currency’s use in international commerce “even if it doesn’t immediately disrupt the USD’s dominant role in global finance.”

According to Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, and CEO of Circle, at some stage the digital yuan would become a currency that could be transacted by any household, firm, or nation-state in the world on the internet, thereby undercutting the hegemony of the US dollar and its all-encompassing payment systems.

It is no secret that China has long resented the status of the dollar as a global reserve currency. Over the years it has taken many steps to improve the acceptability of the yuan as a global medium of exchange.

Meanwhile, there is no clarity on the official launch date, if any, of the Chinese DCEP.

However, Wang Zhong­min, the former vice-chair of the People’s Bank of China’s National Council for Social Security Fund, confirmed at a Fintech Forum in late June that the country had completed the backend architecture development of DCEP, its CBDC.

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