Chinese eCommerce giant JD.com has been paying some of its employees using digital currency for the past few months, the company revealed Sunday (April 25).
JD made the revelation Sunday when announcing its participation in the Digital Currency Electronic Payment — or DCEP — one-year trial show at this week’s Digital China Summit.
In addition to paying salaries, JD has also used the digital currency for business-to-business (B2B) payments and cross-bank settlements. CoinTelegraph noted that the company’s FinTech arm, JD Technology and Digital Currency Research Institute, has been working with the People’s Bank of China on developing DCEP since last year.
JD began accepting digital yuan as a payment method on its website in December, taking in close to 20,000 DCEP-funded orders in the first week, CoinTelegraph reported. The company has also backed DCEP trials, kicking in $4.6 million to a public lottery earlier this year.
CoinTelegraph noted several firms are involved in testing China’s central bank digital currency, including ride-hailing services such as DiDi Chuxing and streaming platforms like Bilibili, while Alipay and WeChat Pay, the two largest payment services in China, are noticeably absent from the scene.
China’s central bank has previously said the digital yuan won’t replace the payment services offered by FinTech companies such as Ant Group and Tencent Holdings.
As PYMNTS reported last week, China is considering testing the digital yuan at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The country’s digital currency pilot program now covers an area that’s home to more than 100 million people.
But while China has expanded the use of its digital currency, officials there have said it should not be seen as an attempt to compete with the U.S. dollar.
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