Editor's Note: This article comes fromRepublic Chinese (ID: republic_co), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

With the successive appearances of "digital renminbi" in Shenzhen and Suzhou, the much-anticipated central bank digital currency CBDC has finally unveiled its mystery. The digital renminbi has also been included in the just-released "Top Ten New Words for Chinese Media in 2020" along with words related to the epidemic, such as resumption of work and production, new crown epidemic, asymptomatic infections, shelter hospitals, and health codes.

The end of the year coincides with the year-end promotion of major e-commerce companies. During the "Double Twelve Shopping Festival", the digital renminbi also took the opportunity to announce its "participation" and completed the first online consumption application scenario. Then this "stress test" What are the results, what are the differences between the two trials, and what new experiences have they brought us?

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A Brief Talk on "Digital RMB"

Before expanding to application scenarios, let's briefly understand the following basic concepts about digital renminbi.

In a broad sense, the digital renminbi (DCEP, the full name is Digital Currency Electronic Payment) is a legal currency in digital form issued by the People's Bank of China.

If you want to establish a complete and comprehensive understanding of the digital renminbi, you may need to understand and analyze the significance of its development from a monetary perspective. These overviews may be complicated and theoretical, and we will not do too much here for the time being discussion.

Borrowing a sentence from Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, "Analysis of Policy Implications for Digital RMB M0 Positioning" to give a simple interpretation of digital RMB:

"The digital renminbi is operated by designated operating agencies and exchanged to the public. It is based on a broad account system and supports the loose coupling function of bank accounts. It is equivalent to banknotes and coins. It has value characteristics and legal compensation, and supports controllable anonymity. We believe that the digital renminbi is mainly positioned as cash in circulation (M0).”

On November 27, Zhou Xiaochuan, the former governor of the People's Bank of China, also made an in-depth public interpretation of the digital renminbi. During the sharing, he mainly focused on the two major issues of DC/EP and e-CNY.

Zhou Xiaochuan pointed out: "DC/EP is a two-tier R&D and pilot project plan, not a payment product. The DC/EP project plan may contain several payment products that can be tried and promoted. These products are finally named e -CNY, the digital renminbi.”

In this sharing, Zhou Xiaochuan briefly reviewed the process of modernization of China's payment system, which Republic.co organizes as follows:

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With the gradual launch of digital renminbi pilots in Shenzhen, Suzhou and other major cities, the digital renminbi, which has been stuck in the "theoretical stage", has finally unveiled its mystery.

According to Zhou Xiaochuan, this year will start to promote Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan, Chengdu, and the "four places and one scene" internal closed pilot test of the future Winter Olympics scene. The populations of the four pilot cities are 13.4 million in Shenzhen, 10.75 million in Suzhou, 1.05 million in Xiongan, and 16.5 million in Chengdu. In terms of size, they are larger than the average European countries.

However, the Winter Olympics will be held in February 2022. After the Winter Olympics scene test is completed, further consideration of promotion to the general public and large-scale use and payment can be considered, which means that the official launch of the digital renminbi may not be earlier than this For a while, but we can still get a glimpse of its true content from the digital RMB red envelope activities in Shenzhen and Suzhou.

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First experience in Shenzhen

Shenzhen was the first city to get the crab of digital renminbi. In the middle of the night on October 8, the Shenzhen Weibo release room stated that in order to promote the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and combine local consumption promotion policies, the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government has recently united the people’s The bank has launched a digital renminbi red envelope pilot.

This event distributed 10 million yuan digital RMB red envelopes to individuals in Shenzhen, each with an amount of 200 yuan, and a total of 50,000 red envelopes.

However, the "Digital RMB APP" has not yet been launched in the app store, and is still in the closed beta stage.

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Shenzhen’s digital renminbi red envelope pilot event lasted for nearly a week from October 12 to October 18. According to Xinhua News Agency, one of the purposes of this pilot event is to stimulate consumption and stimulate domestic demand. According to the data provided by the relevant departments of Shenzhen, in addition to the red envelope transaction, some of the winning individuals also recharged their digital wallets, and the recharge consumption amounted to 901,000 yuan.

In order to support the circulation and use of digital renminbi during the pilot period, there are 3,389 merchants in the Luohu District of Shenzhen that have completed the transformation of the digital renminbi system, including shopping malls and supermarkets, life services, daily retail, and catering consumption. Consumers can make unlimited consumption through barcode payment or near-field payment.

Judging from the experience effect, users can use digital renminbi in two ways: "user scans the merchant's payment code for consumption" and "merchant scans the user's payment code for consumption". In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, some users pointed out that "the experience of scanning the QR code to pay is similar to that of WeChat and Alipay. But the difference is that it is not restricted by the network environment and does not need to bind a card. It is relatively smooth and fast."

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Suzhou Double Twelve Online Experience

Following the Shenzhen pilot, Suzhou announced its participation in Double Twelve, during which a digital RMB red envelope test was launched and online consumption scenarios were added.

The "Double 12 Suzhou Shopping Festival" digital RMB consumption red envelopes will be issued in the form of a "number lottery draw", mainly for eligible Suzhou citizens, and a total of 20 million digital RMB consumption red envelopes will be distributed. Each red envelope is 200 yuan, and the total number of red envelopes is 100,000. Compared with the Shenzhen pilot, the amount of red envelopes distributed in the Suzhou pilot has doubled.

During the event, in addition to providing offline QR code payment, offline "touch" payment function and e-commerce online payment function will also be provided. After the reservation activity is completed, the Suzhou Municipal Government and the operating organization will select some people from those who signed up for the offline wallet experience program as offline wallet experience personnel, and the number of experience personnel will be controlled within 1,000.

According to Peng Mei's information from people familiar with the matter, many merchants in Xiangcheng District, Suzhou have already installed NFC (Near Field Communication, near field communication) QR codes, and testers have experienced digital RMB payment, and can use "offline" and "touch". One-touch function, while the "offline" and "one-touch" functions could not be used in the digital RMB red envelope test in Shenzhen.

In addition, the internal test in Chengdu is also in progress. According to a person in the banking industry in Chengdu, Chengdu currently uses a whitelist invitation system, and only through the invitation of employees of major banks can download digital RMB wallets (known as "Panda Wallet").

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Digital RMB Double Twelve Transcript

JD Digits released the digital RMB 12.12 e-commerce platform consumption report on the evening of the 12th. The data shows that in the 24 hours from 20:00 on December 11 to 20:00 on December 12, nearly 20,000 orders were paid in digital RMB in the JD scene , of which the largest single online payment amount exceeds 10,000 yuan.

The country’s first digital renminbi consumption on an e-commerce platform was born at 20:00:02 on December 11. A post-90s consumer from Suzhou placed an order on JD.com and paid in digital renminbi. The payment process took only 0.5 seconds. Consistent with the existing payment method experience.

Among the first batch of digital RMB users in JD.com, men accounted for more than women, and the post-80s and post-90s accounted for nearly 80% of the total. Half of the users placed orders within one hour of the event.

The post-80s and post-90s generation of JD.com’s digital renminbi users have become the absolute main force, and the two target groups accounted for a total of 79.1%. Interestingly, this seems to be highly overlapped with the crowd favored by Bitcoin.

Respondents were clients currently residing in North America, the United Kingdom, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, Oceania, and Latin America.

Millennials grew up in an internet world and watched the stock market and the economy implode itself in the Great Recession, albeit much harder than the previous Boomer generation (born from 1946 to 1964). But because of these experiences millennials have adapted to today's changes.

This generation is proficient in digital and new technology, understands and can benefit from the ever-changing economic situation, so they are more interested in emerging concepts such as Bitcoin and digital renminbi.

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When digital renminbi enters daily life

The central bank's digital currency is entering the vision of our lives. Not only China, but also the European Union and the United Kingdom have made it clear that they are exploring the central bank's digital currency. But it must be admitted that the central bank's digital currency affects the whole body, especially in terms of stability and ease of use.

On the other hand, the introduction of the central bank's digital currency into the economy also plays an extremely important role for governments of all countries. On the one hand, the central bank can better control the circulation of M0 and further realize the "fixed irrigation" of monetary policy. On the other hand, user transactions are transferred from fund products such as Yu'e Bao to M0's digital currency, which also reduces the risk of financial idling to a certain extent.

The central bank's digital currency is different from electronic payment. It is a change at the bottom of the national currency and economic policy, which also means that it needs more deduction and testing. We have also seen that more and more cities are joining the digital renminbi test. According to Caixin.com, the digital renminbi pilot program will be rolled out gradually in many places across the country in recent months, and the scope will continue to expand. In addition to the announced Xiongan, Suzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen and Winter Olympics scenes, new ones will be added Pilot projects in Shanghai, Changsha, Hainan, Qingdao, Dalian, and Xi'an.

On the other hand, the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute is also actively cooperating with online payment scenarios, including Didi, Meituan, JD Digits, State Grid Jinke, Lakala, and Bilibili, which has not yet announced but learned of the cooperation wait.