Support offline and online consumption, can also be used without internet
New Choice of Digital RMB Payment (Financial Eye)
Our reporter Ge Mengchao Wu Qiuyu
In the past 2020, the digital RMB has attracted much attention from the society.
The "Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Term Goals for 2035" put forward to steadily advance the research and development of digital currencies.
Many people are curious: What is a digital renminbi?
How is the payment experience?
How will it affect our lives?
Around these issues, the reporter recently interviewed consumers, merchants and relevant experts.
RMB in "Digital Wallet"
The digital renminbi payment experience is smooth, and you can pay without the Internet
The digital renminbi is approaching.
Since the second half of 2020, digital renminbi has launched large-scale pilot tests for the non-targeted public in Shenzhen, Suzhou and other places.
During the pilot period, many consumers have adopted this payment method.
On December 11, 2020, Ji Li, who works for a technology company in Suzhou, was having breakfast at home. The mobile phone placed on the dining table vibrated a few times.
Glancing at the text message that popped up on the phone screen, he was extremely excited: "I won the red envelope for digital RMB consumption!"
On that morning, many Suzhou citizens were as excited as Ji Li.
During the "Double 12 Suzhou Shopping Festival" in 2020, Suzhou City issued 100,000 consumer red envelopes to eligible citizens in the form of a "lottery lottery", each containing 200 yuan in digital RMB.
Citizens who have won the lottery can receive red envelopes after opening a digital wallet on their mobile phones according to the guidelines.
The digital renminbi in the red packet can be consumed at designated offline merchants in Suzhou area or online.
What is a digital RMB?
“The digital renminbi is a legal currency issued by the People’s Bank of China with national credit endorsement. It is a digital form of renminbi.” said Zhou Liping, deputy director of the Payment and Settlement Research Center of the Institute of Finance of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The positioning of the digital renminbi is to replace a portion of cash.
At present, cash mainly exists in physical forms such as banknotes and coins, and digital renminbi can be understood as digital cash.
Paper money and coins are stored in tangible wallets, which are relatively inconvenient to carry, and are mostly used for offline transactions; digital renminbi is stored in invisible digital wallets and can be used for offline and online transactions.
How should the digital RMB in hand be spent?
Ji Li's idea is a bit "daring": Strive to be the first lucky person to use digital renminbi on online e-commerce platforms.
"The event officially started at 8pm on December 11, 2020. I was waiting with my mobile phone at 7:30pm." Ji Li said that he deliberately selected a battery with a unit price of only 17 yuan online. He cherishes the "hard-won" digital renminbi.
Open the shopping cart, pay immediately, choose digital renminbi payment... As soon as the hand of the clock points to 8 o'clock, Ji Li gets busy.
"I was squeezing time while paying. The order was successfully placed at 8:0:32. The payment process is very similar to using mobile payment tools." He said, although he failed to become the "first person to eat crabs" in the end, However, he was deeply impressed by the convenient and smooth payment experience of digital renminbi.
In the next period of time, Ji Li used digital renminbi to eat sirloin noodles at a snack bar, and bought a notebook at the supermarket...
Different from Ji Li's online experience, what Suzhou citizen Li Yichen has long awaited is the "offline" payment function of digital RMB.
The so-called "offline" payment refers to a method in which users do not connect to the back-end system when making transactions or transfers when there is no Internet or weak Internet, but to verify the user's identity, confirm transaction information and make payment in the digital wallet.
Simply put, payment can be made without internet.
What kind of experience is "offline" payment?
At the Baifen Tea Beverage Shop on the basement floor of Fanhua Center, Xiangcheng District, Suzhou, Li Yichen and the owner adjusted their mobile phones to flight mode. The owner entered the amount of 35 yuan in the digital wallet, and Li Yichen opened the payment page in the digital wallet. The two mobile phones touched each other and only heard a "swish" sound, the digital RMB payment was completed, which took less than 2 seconds.
"The entire payment process is very smooth, just like taking cash out of your own pocket and stuffing it into the pocket of the shopkeeper, you don't have to hold your mobile phone to look for the Internet anymore," said Li Yichen.
Provide new payment options
The goods and services that can be purchased using cash and mobile payment tools can be purchased in the future with digital RMB
Data shows that currently about 13% of my country's residents mainly pay in cash; in the third quarter of 2020, the amount of mobile payment is 116.74 trillion yuan, an increase of more than 35% year-on-year.
"People currently prefer to choose cash, bank cards and mobile payments. In the future, digital renminbi is expected to provide a brand new payment option." said Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of China Merchants Union Finance.
"Cash is not a current or fixed deposit. Holding cash does not accrue interest, and holding digital renminbi naturally does not accrue interest. In addition, like deposits and withdrawals, commercial banks will not charge when individual users redeem or redeem digital renminbi. Any expenses." Zhou Liping said.
Some people worry that banknotes will gradually disappear after the digital renminbi is issued.
Liu Xiaochun, deputy dean of the Shanghai New Finance Research Institute, said that the public's payment habits are different. Some elderly people still have a strong demand for paper money. The People's Bank of China is not issuing digital renminbi to eliminate paper money and other physical forms of cash.
“As long as the people have the demand for paper money, the People’s Bank of China will not stop the supply of paper money. In the foreseeable future, digital renminbi and paper money will coexist for a long time.” said Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China.
What is the difference between digital renminbi and commonly used mobile payment tools?
In this regard, Mu Changchun said that digital renminbi and mobile payment tools are not on the same dimension.
The mobile payment tool is the financial infrastructure and the wallet, while the digital renminbi is the content of the wallet.
Yi Gang, Governor of the People's Bank of China, said that at present, the digital economy is an increasingly important driving force for global economic growth.
The development and application of legal digital currency is conducive to efficiently satisfying the public's demand for legal currency under the digital economy, improving the convenience, security and anti-counterfeiting level of retail payments, and boosting the accelerated development of my country's digital economy.
"As mobile payment becomes more and more important, the People's Bank of China needs to promote the payment system to keep pace with the times, and introduce digital RMB as a pure public product through top-level design, which becomes an important supplement to electronic payment." Liu Xiaochun said.
"At present, when users use mobile payment tools, they are essentially paying based on bank accounts. In the future, in addition to cash, bank cards and mobile payments, digital renminbi will give users new choices." Dong Ximiao said.
What can the digital renminbi be used to buy in the future?
It is understood that during the pilot period alone, there were more than 10,000 consumer-end merchants in Suzhou that could use digital renminbi to consume red envelopes, covering various categories such as shopping malls and supermarkets, daily retail, catering consumption, and life services.
The Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China has recently reached strategic cooperation with companies such as JD Digital Technology and Didi Chuxing. Digital RMB is expected to have more online consumption scenarios in the future.
"As long as the technical conditions are available, the goods and services that can be purchased with cash and mobile payment tools can be purchased in the future with digital RMB." Zhou Liping said, for example, it is winter now, and some ski lovers like to go to the ski resorts. skill.
In the future, everyone can use digital renminbi to buy ski resort tickets, pay for meals, etc.
Recently, participants in the test used digital renminbi to buy subway tickets for the Beijing Daxing Airport Line, and experienced the use of digital renminbi wearable device wallets to "touch" through the subway gates.
Bring a better payment experience
Without a bank account, you can also enjoy financial services such as payment
How will the digital RMB affect our lives?
Experts say that for ordinary people, digital renminbi will improve the user's payment experience to a certain extent, and will also help enhance the inclusiveness and inclusiveness of financial services.
——Digital RMB is expected to provide users with a better payment experience.
"Although mobile payment tools can provide a better payment experience in most cases, there are still some problems." Dong Ximiao said, for example, some merchants will selectively accept mobile payment tools.
At the fruit stalls on the roadside, most of the QR codes of mainstream payment tools are posted. If consumers do not download these tools, it will be difficult to complete the payment.
For another example, the use of mobile payment tools must rely on the network, and the payment experience will be greatly reduced if there is no network or a weak network.
“The use of digital renminbi and mobile payment tools is similar, and both support multiple payment methods such as QR code payment and near-field payment.” Dong Ximiao said. However, compared with current mobile payment tools, digital renminbi supports “offline” payment. Function, digital RMB can still be used normally in airplane cabins, fast-moving high-speed trains, basements and other places without internet or weak internet, which will greatly enhance the user's payment experience.
Judging from the pilot situation in Suzhou, digital renminbi is quite popular among merchants.
Mr. He, the person in charge of the Huawei store in Wuyue Plaza, Xiangcheng District, Suzhou City, told reporters that merchants will be charged a certain fee regardless of whether consumers choose to use POS machines or mobile payment tools to pay. Digital RMB currently has zero procedures for merchants Fees are received in real time, which provides a lot of convenience for business operations and saves financial costs.
——Digital RMB helps to enhance the inclusiveness and inclusiveness of financial services.
Digital renminbi is based on a generalized account system and supports loose coupling of bank accounts. Experts explained that this means that if users do not have a bank account, they can also use their mobile phone number and other unique identifiers to open a digital wallet and use digital renminbi for payment.
"After the issuance of the digital renminbi, people in some rural areas and remote mountainous areas can enjoy payment and other financial services through digital wallets even if they do not have a bank account. This helps to enhance the inclusiveness of financial services. For those who do not have a domestic bank account in China For foreign tourists, they can make small payments by opening a digital wallet." Dong Ximiao said.
Looking back at history, the People's Bank of China is one of the earliest institutions in the world that started legal digital currency research.
In 2014, the People's Bank of China began to conduct special research on issues such as the digital currency issuance framework and key technologies.
At the end of 2017, upon approval, the People's Bank of China organized some commercial banks and relevant institutions to jointly develop the digital RMB system.
So, when will the masses really use the digital renminbi?
Experts said that the digital renminbi will first be used in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hebei Xiong'an New District, Chengdu and future Winter Olympics scenes to conduct internal closed pilot tests to test theoretical reliability, system stability, functional availability, process convenience, and scenario applicability And risk controllability.
"The current pilot test of the digital renminbi is just a routine work in the research and development process. It does not mean that the digital renminbi will be officially launched. There is no timetable for when it will be officially launched." Zhou Liping said.
Looking forward to the near future, the digital renminbi can truly enter the lives of people.