Recently, the pilot of digital RMB has continued to advance, including the launch of specific solutions in many pilot areas such as Jiangsu, Guangdong Shenzhen, and Zhejiang Yiwu. Industry insiders believe that the intensive launch of relevant plans provides a policy basis for the promotion of digital RMB in various places according to local conditions, which is conducive to expanding the application scenarios of digital RMB and improving the scale of transactions, and is expected to play a greater role in stimulating household consumption, helping to reduce costs and improve efficiency, and promoting the high-quality development of the digital economy.

Specific programs have been launched in many places

At present, the pilot scope of digital RMB has been expanded to 17 regions in 26 provinces (cities), and the integration of digital RMB into various fields of people's clothing, food, housing and transportation has accelerated.

Since the beginning of this year, the pilot development of digital RMB has continued to run out of "acceleration", and specific solutions have been launched in many places to promote the incremental expansion of applications. For example, the "Pilot Work Plan for In-depth Promotion of Digital RMB in Yiwu Small Commodity Market" released in March proposed 3 specific measures, including comprehensively improving the acceptance environment of digital RMB in Yiwu Market, promoting a significant increase in transaction scale, and enriching digital trade application scenarios.

With the issuance of the Jiangsu Province Digital RMB Pilot Work Plan, Jiangsu became the first province to announce the digital RMB pilot work plan. The plan proposes to basically form a digital RMB operation management system with convenient and efficient services, wide application coverage and a relatively complete ecology by the end of 2025. Previously, Shenzhen issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Shenzhen International Wealth Management Center", proposing to cooperate with Hong Kong to carry out the pilot of cross-border payment of digital RMB and jointly build a demonstration zone for cross-border application of digital RMB.

"The digital yuan has basically completed the top-level design, functional research and development, system debugging and other work, and has carried out pilot work in accordance with the principles of stability, safety, controllability, innovation and practicality." Wang Yifeng, chief analyst of the financial industry of Everbright Securities, said that the intensive launch of specific work plans in each pilot area this year shows that the research and development pilot work has been steadily advancing.

"The local plans present three characteristics: first, the application of digital RMB in the public sector and its value to the real economy have attracted widespread attention; Second, the content mostly involves cutting-edge technologies related to digital RMB; The third is to put forward specific quantitative indicators for the promotion of digital RMB. Su Xiaorui, senior consultant of the financial industry of Analysys, said.

Application scenarios are constantly expanding

Since the launch of the pilot, the application scenarios of digital RMB have been continuously enriched, and the transaction amount and stock have been increasing, and by the end of 2022, the stock of digital RMB in circulation has reached 136.1 billion yuan.

At the same time, various forms of digital RMB red envelopes launched around "promoting consumption" have played a positive role in expanding domestic demand and stabilizing growth. For example, Meituan leveraged the advantages of the retail platform scenario, and Union Bank launched digital RMB red envelopes and consumption coupons for users in newly piloted areas, helping to boost consumption and accelerate the popularization and application of digital RMB. "Since the pilot, the digital yuan has been issued in the form of consumption coupons many times, and combined with smart contracts, it can not only set the amount of consumption coupons to be used, but also target them to designated consumption categories and merchants, which is of great significance for accurately boosting the real economy." Su Xiaorui said.

In addition to residents' daily consumption, more digital RMB application scenarios are also accelerating the "unlocking". Taking Zhejiang Province as an example, innovation achievements in six pilot regions continue to emerge: four enterprises successfully participated in the cross-border application test of the multilateral central bank's digital currency bridge, exploring a new model of cross-border application of digital RMB; Asian Games-themed hardware wallet released, providing a new payment experience for domestic and foreign people; Digital RMB has made effective breakthroughs in the field of financial services, successfully landing new scenarios such as credit issuance, insurance compensation, and wealth management purchase...

The reporter noted that the digital yuan is strengthening cooperation with institutions in the ecosystem in the circulation link to accelerate the expansion of application scenarios in the "plane". On the one hand, it is to strengthen the cooperation between "money" and "wallet", for example, Alipay has been used as a payment platform to access digital yuan, Alipay provides payment services, Taobao, Ele.me, Tmall Supermarket, Hema and other scenarios can use digital yuan payment; On the other hand, in the era of mobile payment, smart phones have become the main hardware carrier of payment, digital yuan continues to strengthen cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi, vivo, Huawei and other mobile phone models have realized digital yuan without electricity.

"The continuous innovation and enrichment of application scenarios will help the promotion and popularization of digital RMB on the one hand, and bring more convenience to people's lives on the other hand." Su Xiaorui said that in the future scenario expansion space, two factors can be considered: first, in the field of cross-border payment, how to give full play to the value of digital RMB in international trade, cross-border consumption and other scenarios; The second is how to extend to wider rural areas and help more people cross the "digital divide".

"Digital currencies lower the barrier to entry into financial services." Wang Yifeng said that the pilot scenarios of digital RMB have covered the fields of living payment, transportation, and government services, and with the expansion of the pilot scope and the enhancement of promotion, the depth of coverage of digital RMB application scenarios will be further deepened and refined.

Improve the construction of the ecological system

Industry insiders believe that although the pilot has achieved many substantial results in many fields, the digital RMB ecosystem still needs to be improved, and to give full play to its characteristic functions, market participants need to work together to continue to make efforts in improving infrastructure and expanding application scenarios.

"To promote the construction of the digital yuan ecosystem, we need to establish a sustainable development mechanism and mobilize the enthusiasm of all parties." Zhou Maohua, macro researcher of the financial market department of China Everbright Bank, said that the normalization of payment behavior will be the basis for building a digital RMB ecosystem, on the one hand, we should continue to promote the use of digital RMB through various activities to let more people accept and use; On the other hand, we should accelerate the improvement of digital RMB infrastructure, improve user experience through software and hardware upgrades and optimization, and further strengthen system security and reliability.

"The promotion and application needs to be integrated in the wave of digital economy development and drive the common development of the upstream and downstream industrial chains through digital RMB." Wang Yifeng said that digital currency as a cross-border payment tool has flexibility, convenience, traceability and other advantages, China, as the world's second largest economy, should actively participate in international cooperation at the level of payment transactions, participate in the discussion of legal digital currency rule formulation, and actively explore the feasibility of digital yuan for cross-border payment.

Ouyang Rihui, vice president of the China Internet Economy Research Institute of the Central University of Finance and Economics, believes that to accelerate the construction of an open digital RMB ecosystem, first, continue to improve the scenario construction and payment scheme of digital RMB smart contracts, and implement the smart contract application of digital RMB in merchant sales, intelligent electronic payment, and agency payment business; The second is to continue to enrich the application scenarios of digital RMB from the aspects of expanding the breadth and depth of the pilot; The third is to strengthen the deep integration of digital RMB and digital trade, and gradually open up application scenarios in the fields of industrial Internet and cross-border trade.

Xuan Changneng, Vice Governor of People's Bank of China, said that the People's Bank of China will promote the pilot of digital RMB research and development in an orderly manner, continue to improve the top-level design and ecosystem construction, strengthen product and application innovation, gradually establish and improve the management framework, and continuously deepen the results of the pilot.