Tencent-Backed Firms See Digital Yuan Testing In China

Meituan-Dianping, an online food retailer firm backed by Tencent, the owner of WeChat, has started to gear up for the testing of China’s digital Yuan.

Tencent Throwing Its Weight

In the latest development of China’s process of integrating its own version of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the People’s Bank of China has already come and discussed a proposal for a trial with the Beijing company. This trial would see the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP) system roll-out within the online food platform. This comes by way of a news report made by Bloomberg.

Alongside this, however, there have been discussions made with Didi Chuxing, a ride-hailing platform, as well. Alongside this, stands discussions with Bilibili, a video-streaming service, with both of the above-mentioned firms having previously received Tencent’s backing.

Streamlining The Piloting Process To Scale

Citing sources close to the matter, it’s revealed that these discussions are at advanced stages, with imminent plans for rolling out the DC/EP system as soon as it could possibly handle it.

Meituan-Dianping holds 400 million active users, standing as one of the largest food delivery platforms the world has to offer. This can be seen by merely looking at its revenues, that managed to blast over the RMB 97.5 billion mark, or approximately $14 billion, give or take

What this means for the world at large, is the possibility that Tencent could serve as one of the leading issuers of the digital Yuan, once the currency is officially launched by the Chinese central bank.

The Global CBDC Race

Testing has been going on for some time now, with four cities across China having pilot programs be rolled out as the months went on. With Tencent, a heavyweight commercial partner, onboard, the scope for testing this currency at scale is significantly increasing, and will help the country with the eventual national roll-out.

China is the current leader in this new CBDC race the world’s powers are partaking in, excluding the dubious Petro coin of Venezuela, which beat the world to it, technically speaking. Even so, it’s suspected that there’s still some time left before the country eventually rolls it out.

As China is already in the process of piloting, other central banks are still in the early stages of experimentation, with the EU being arguably the closest to catch up, with the UK in the race, and the US is somewhere in the back, caught up in its own issues.