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China digital currency
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CEO of fintech giant Ant Group pledges support for digital yuan at Shanghai conference, promotes cross-blockchain use

  • Eric Jing Xiandong said the e-CNY could be as valuable to industrial internet use as mobile payments were for consumer use
  • China has been pushing the use of its sovereign digital currency, telling Alipay and WeChat Pay to unify payment QR codes

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Ant Group CEO Eric Jing’s voice of support for the digital yuan came days after China’s central bank called on mobile payment platform operators to unify QR codes. Photo: Shutterstock
Tracy Quin ShanghaiandAnn Caoin Shanghai
Eric Jing Xiandong, chairman and CEO of fintech giant Ant Group, pledged support to the Chinese sovereign digital currency e-CNY in his latest public appearance at a conference in Shanghai, the country’s finance capital.
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The e-CNY could be as valuable to the industrial internet as mobile payments were to the consumer internet, Jing said at the “Inclusion Conference on the Bund” on Thursday, according to Chinese media reports.

“Because the biggest feature of the e-CNY is programmability, it can ensure cross-chain communication between the payment blockchain and the business blockchain in the payment chain of yuan clearing, so that one party can perform the contract and the other party can automatically deliver it,” he explained. “This will bring huge synergy effects to the industry.”

The People’s Bank of China first launched trials of the e-CNY at the end of 2019. Cities were selected based on factors such as major national development and coordinated regional expansion strategies, as well as location-specific industrial and economic factors. As trials expanded to dozens of cities across China, the technology powering the e-CNY has remained opaque. Digital yuan is not minted on a blockchain, but it has been made compatible with cross-border programmes like the mBridge with Hong Kong.
Mu Changchun, head of the Digital Currency Research Institute, the central bank agency responsible for developing the digital yuan, said at an industry forum earlier this week that mobile payment providers such as Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay and Ant’s Alipay should work to improve their interoperability and unify quick response (QR) codes for e-CNY payments.

Both apps support e-CNY payments, but not all types of mobile payments use the same QR code scheme.

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The Inclusion Conference, which runs through Saturday, is being held for a second time after the first conference in 2020. China’s strict zero-Covid policies, which were finally eased last December, prevented the event from taking place in the last two years.

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