The Chinese city of Suzhou will hold the second lottery of the digital yuan on “Double 12” day
Suzhou, a city west of Shanghai will hold a giveaway designed to gauge usability of the digital yuan in a shopping festival known as “Double 12” on 12 December, according to The Paper, an online media under the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group.
The trial will be similar to one held in Shenzhen in October, which allowed residents to apply for a 200 yuan share of 10 million units of the CBDC in a kind of lottery, worth around $1.5 million in total.
The Suzhou rollout will include the “offline” and “touch” functions of the digital wallets, allowing users to transfer money simply by touching mobile devices, even when neither are connected to a network. In Shenzhen city, the participants were not able to use this functionality.
The Paper reported that many businesses in the Xiangcheng district of Suzhou have already installed point-of-sales tech with NFC (near-field communication) and QR code capabilities allowing the digital yuan winnings to be spent.
Double 12 is a shopping festival run by e-commerce giant Alibaba, mimicking the “double 11” of Singles Day, which was originally created as a reason for people to celebrate singledom on the symbolic date of 11/11, Double 12 takes place on December 12.
In April, the Agricultural Bank of China had piloted a digital wallet app. However, at the time, only users who are on the bank’s white list were allowed to register accounts on the app.
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