As of now, there are almost eight banks in China that are currently working on their banking platforms for the digital yuan. These banks are apart from the big four that are currently working directly for the CBDC. These eight banks are also in process of building up platforms that will be able to interoperate with the digital yuan token.
As per the recent reports, these banks are getting ready to roll-out their services for the digital yuan and platform offerings. For now, the banks are focusing on rolling-out the offerings through smartphones.
The big four that are directly working on the CBDC project include the Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, and China Construction Bank.
All the banks included in the big four are working directly with the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) for more than a year. Once completed, the banks will help the People’s Bank of China to roll out the digital yuan all across the country.
Ever since the banks started working on the digital yuan project, several pilots, as well as public testing, have been carried out. People that have participated in the pilots and tests have all been handed out digital wallets through the smartphone wallets provided by the big four.
As per sources, the Postal Savings Bank of China is already working on introducing a new hard wallet that almost resembles a conventional credit card. Furthermore, the media arm of Tencent has also revealed that the Postal Savings Bank is also working to introduce a smartphone application wallet.
The majority of the Postal Savings Bank is owned by the Chinese postal services. The bank specializes and is popularly known for providing banking solutions to medium and small enterprises. Additionally, the bank also provides the same to low-income and rural community customers.
More sources have confirmed that the Bank of Communications is also working to launch its own digital yuan wallet. The Bank of Communications is currently the fifth-largest bank in China.
The users that are currently taking part in the digital yuan pilots have also shared some details around the banks other than the big four, working in the CBDC space.
The users have confirmed that the communications they received from the big four alongside digital yuan advise that the tokens are interoperable through several banks.
The names of the banks include Bank of Communications and Postal Savings Banks, China CITIC Bank, and China Merchants Banks. The China CITIC Bank is based in Hong Kong while China Merchants Bank is a corporate-owned bank.
From the looks of it, China is almost ready to kick-off its digital yuan offerings throughout the country in a matter of few months.
