China’s central bank is planning another test drive of its digital currency during the Lunar New Year by handing out $1.5 million in digital packets to 50,000 Beijing residents.
The packets will contain 200 yuan, worth roughly $30, and be given to recipients chosen out of a pool of candidates. Recipients will be able to use the digital cash from Feb. 10 to Feb. 17 at designated offline businesses or on eCommerce site JD.com, according to CNBC.
Participants needed to have a Chinese government identification number or residency permit from Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan to qualify for the currency packets.
This is the People’s Bank of China’s third major test run for digital currency. Smaller runs were recently conducted in Shenzen and Suzhou. The bank has been trying to develop a digital currency amid a huge rise in popularity of mobile payment apps, with Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay now the preferred form of consumer payment in China, according to CNBC.
CNBC points out that China’s central bank digital currency differs significantly from alternative currencies such as bitcoin as it is controlled by a single entity as opposed to a decentralized network.
In late January, the central bank announced that it would be conducting a test run of its digital currency in Shenzen, according to XinhuaNet.
In the Shenzen test run, participants were given a total of 20 million digital yuan, worth around $3.1 million, that they could spend at roughly 3,500 designated shopping locations from Feb. 1 to Feb. 9. Participants accessed the cash through a mobile app.
A test run in Suzhou in December involved handing out $3.1 million in packets of digital yuan to around 100,000 participants, with each packet worth 200 yuan. Users could spend the cash at independent shops and digital businesses such as JD.com, food delivery platform Meituan, and ridesharing platform Didi, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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