At least 625 Hong Kong residents had opened an e-CNY wallet from the start of the campaign last Wednesday to Sunday, according to the report, citing data from the Shenzhen branch of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the country’s central bank.
The bank planned to explore “more forms of digital currency wallets”, such as integrating wallets into SIM cards so that visitors from Hong Kong can use the same card for both communications and payments, a branch official was quoted as saying.
China is on track to become a global pioneer in adopting a sovereign digital currency. In the past three years, the country has expanded trials of the e-CNY to 26 cities and zones, with the size of digital yuan in circulation reaching 13.6 billion yuan (US$2 billion) at the end of December, according to PBOC.
A woman uses an Octopus card to pay minibus fare in Hong Kong. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Hong Kong has been actively involved in the cross-border transactions of e-CNY. It completed last year a 40-day trial involving mainland China, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, handling more than 160 cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions totalling over 150 million yuan.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) was also exploring a bilateral arrangement with the Bank of Thailand to allow people to pay at shops and restaurants in the Southeast Asian nation using the Faster Payment System – a payment platform in Hong Kong connecting traditional banks and digital wallet operators, HKMA’s deputy-CEO Howard Lee said in September.
Lee added that the authority had also begun the second phase of its e-CNY trial, which was expanded to include three more banks in addition to the one bank in the first phase. They were HSBC, Hang Seng Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of China Hong Kong.
