China’s e-commerce giant JD.com is starting to pay some employees in digital yuan
China’s plan to adopt its digital currency has strong support from its technology conglomerates. JD.com, a major Chinese online retailer that competes with Alibaba, said Monday it had started paying some employees in digital yuan (since January), the virtual version of the country’s physical currency.
China has been busy experimenting with digital currency for the past few months. In October, Shenzhen, a southern city known for its advanced economic policies, distributed digital currency worth 10 million yuan to 500,000 residents, who could then use the money to shop at certain online and offline retailers.
Several other large Chinese cities have followed the example of Shenzhen. The residents of these regions must apply to selected banks so that they can receive and pay with the digital yuan.
The electronic yuan initiative is a collaborative effort involving China’s regulators, commercial banks and technology solution providers. At first glance, the scheme still mimics how the physical yuan is circulating at the moment; Under the direction of the central bank, the six major commercial banks in China, including ICBC, are distributing the digital yuan to smaller banks and a network of technology solution providers, which could help give more use cases to the new electronic money.
For example, JD.com has teamed up with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to deposit the digital revenue. The online retailer is one of the first organizations in China to pay wages in electronic yuan; in August, some government employees in the eastern city of Suzhou also started being paid with digital money.
Across the board, China’s big tech companies have been actively involved in building the yuan digital ecosystem, which will help the central government better track money flows.
In addition to JD.com, the video streaming platform Bilibili, the on-demand service provider Meituan and the ride-hailing app Didi have also started accepting digital yuan for user purchases. Gaming and social networking giant Tencent has become one of the “digital yuan operators” and will participate in the development, research and development and operations of electronic money. Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which is undergoing a major overhaul after a stalled IPO, has also partnered with the central bank to work on building the digital money infrastructure. Huawei, the titan of telecommunications equipment, has unveiled a wallet on one of its smartphone models that allows users to instantly spend digital yuan even when the device is offline.
The article has been updated to clarify the timeline for the introduction of digital salary.
