Beijing, Suzhou announced that the digital Renminbi (e-CNY) can be used in its railway and subway system

By Selena 06/30/21 10:54 AM

As the municipal government of Beijing said in an announcement, China’s capital Beijing has extended a trial of the central bank digital currency (CBDC), known as e-CNY, to the country’s railway system.

Source: Weixin

Beijing Rail Transit starts accepting digital Renminbi (e-CNY) on a pilot basis

Users who have activated the standalone digital yuan mobile app through the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) can now pay with e-CNY on all metro lines in the city. The ICBC is one bank with a high degree of focus on introducing the digital renminbi to customers. It’s already working on offering cryptocurrency exchange services at ATMs in Beijing, as AZCoin News reported.

The Beijing subway system consists of 24 lines and 428 stations and provides commuter services to more than 10 million people every day. The pilot program is another in a long list of such programs that the Chinese government is running.

So far, Beijing has so far conducted two e-CNY lottery campaigns by giving away 50 million digital yuan to 250,000 lottery winners, who were able to download and activate the standalone e-CNY mobile app. Although the pilot phase for lottery campaigns has ended, users can still top up their digital Renminbi mobile wallet to pay anywhere e-CNY is supported.

Yitongxing is another mobile app dedicated to Beijing metro ticket payments but it can also be used for CBDC payments. To do this, users must enable the secondary wallet feature inside the e-CNY app, and then they will find the digital Renminbi payment option inside their Yitongxing app.

The trial rollout in Beijing comes just a day after the Suzhou government announced that e-CNY could also be used in the latest line of the Suzhou metro system.

It is Beijing’s latest attempt to expand the use of the country’s central bank digital currency. Earlier this month, ICBC activated 3,000 automated teller machines in Beijing with a feature that converts e-CNY to cash and vice versa.