Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc has reportedly become the country’s first virtual platform to accept Beijing’s homegrown digital currency.
According to a post on the company’s official WeChat account, as cited by Reuters, the company’s financial and technology platform will accept digital yuan as payment for some products on its online mall, as part of an experimental giveaway of digital yuan to citizens of Suzhou, near Shanghai.
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Under the Suzhou programme, the government and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will issue 200 digital yuan “red envelopes” to 100,000 consumers selected through a lottery.
According to the People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang, the digital yuan has been used in more than four million transactions, worth a total of about CNY2bn (US$306m), as of early last month.
The central bank kicked off tests for the online renminbi in some cities in April to bolster its status as a global currency and to help control the domestic economy as it rapidly goes digital, adds Bloomberg.
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