Mobile payment has become an important way of daily consumption. However, the current payment tools are mainly provided by the private sector, and there may be risks such as market segmentation and privacy leakage.
In this context, the People's Bank of China launched the Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) to provide the public with a credible and safe means of payment, and to improve the payment efficiency while maintaining the stability of the payment system.
The transaction volume is close to 62 billion yuan.
Digital RMB is the legal tender in digital form issued by the People's Bank of China, which is the same as physical RMB and has value characteristics and legal compensation.
According to Liu Xiaoyu, senior partner of Bank of China Law Firm in Beijing, the People's Bank of China launched the digital RMB pilot project in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong 'an, Chengdu and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi, Qingdao and Dalian also joined the pilot cities.
In July this year, the People's Bank of China released the "White Paper on Research and Development Progress of Digital RMB in China", which showed that as of June 30th, there were more than 1.32 million pilot scenarios of digital RMB, covering the fields of living consumption, catering services, transportation, shopping, government services and so on. More than 20.87 million personal wallets and 35 1 10,000 corporate wallets were opened, and the cumulative number of transactions was more than 70.75 million, amounting to about 34.5 billion yuan. By the end of 10, there were1000000 personal wallets and1000000 corporate wallets in digital RMB, and the cumulative number of transactions reached1500000, with the transaction volume approaching 62 billion yuan. At present, there are 1.55 million merchants supporting digital RMB wallets, covering public utilities, catering services, transportation, shopping, political affairs and other fields. At the same time, six state-owned banks, including industry, agriculture, China, construction, communications and postal services, and two private banks, namely online merchant bank and Weizhong bank, have developed various hard wallet carriers, including paper cards, video cards, fingerprint cards, earphone covers, watches, bracelets and gloves, and two telecom operators, China Telecom and China Mobile, have also launched their own digital RMB wallets.
According to Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China, the central bank will improve the design and use of digital RMB according to the pilot situation. First, refer to the idea of cash and bank account management, and establish a management model suitable for digital RMB; Second, continue to improve the settlement efficiency, privacy protection, anti-counterfeiting and other functions; Third, promote the interaction between digital RMB and existing electronic payment tools, and realize the unification of safety and convenience; The fourth is to improve the construction of digital RMB ecosystem and enhance the inclusiveness and accessibility of digital RMB.
Conducive to protecting information security
Mobile payment is developing rapidly in the world. In recent years, especially after the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, global electronic payment, especially mobile payment, has become more popular. According to public information, the amount of mobile payment in China increased by nearly 25% year-on-year last year, and the penetration rate reached 86%, which facilitated the lives of residents and strongly supported the anti-epidemic work.
Yi Gang said that at present, electronic payment tools are mainly provided by the private sector, and there may be risks such as market segmentation and privacy leakage. CBDC enables the central bank to continue to provide the public with reliable and safe means of payment in the digital economy era. The People's Bank of China began to study the legal digital currency in 20 14, and in 20 16, it established the first generation central bank of China, the prototype of digital currency, and put forward the basic features of M0 positioning, two-tier operating system and controllable anonymity. Since 20 17, the People's Bank of China has cooperated with commercial banks and Internet companies. , jointly carry out research and development of digital RMB. The pilot project started on 20 19.
Digital RMB is different from electronic payment tools such as WeChat and Alipay. Liu Xiaoyu believes that, first of all, they have different legal attributes. Digital RMB is the national legal tender and the asset with the highest security level, while WeChat and Alipay are only the payment tools of legal tender. Second, the payment methods are different. Digital RMB has the characteristics of value, which can be transferred without relying on bank accounts and supports offline transactions. It has the characteristics of "payment is settlement", and WeChat and Alipay must rely on the bound bank account and network status to pay; Third, in terms of whether to support anonymous payment, digital RMB supports controllable anonymity, which is conducive to protecting personal privacy and user information security, while WeChat and Alipay can't really realize anonymous payment.
Liu Xiaoyu said that in terms of payment scenarios, digital RMB takes into account both online and offline, covering wholesale and retail, catering, cultural tourism, education and medical care, public transportation, government payment, tax collection, subsidies and other fields. After the comprehensive promotion of digital RMB in the future, including financial management, credit card, living payment and other payment scenarios, digital RMB can be fully covered.
In addition, digital RMB has the characteristics of loose coupling with bank accounts, instant payment and low cost, and the public who have not opened a bank account can also enjoy basic financial services through digital RMB wallets. At the same time, the design of digital RMB wallet facilitates online and offline full-scene applications, meets the differentiated needs of users with multi-subjects, multi-levels, multi-categories and multi-forms, and avoids the obstacles brought by the "digital divide". It is expected that the future application scenarios of digital RMB will completely surpass payment tools such as WeChat and Alipay.
It is fundamentally different from Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, which has been mentioned many times recently, is essentially different from the statutory digital currency of the central bank.
According to Huang Zhen, a professor at the Law School of the Central University of Finance and Economics, El Salvador, a small Central American country, passed legislation to make Bitcoin the legal tender of the country. However, virtual currencies such as Bitcoin are not currencies, but "encrypted digital tokens" based on new technologies such as blockchain, which are essentially different from the "central bank digital currency" endorsed by the state credit. Bitcoin transactions challenge the legal tender of a country.
Liu Xiaoyu said that Bitcoin is a virtual currency generated in the form of P2P based on blockchain technology. Unlike most currencies, Bitcoin is not issued by a specific monetary institution. It is based on the blockchain technology, according to a specific algorithm, through a large number of calculations, which is called "mining". The total amount of bitcoin is limited and scarce. The total currency system is 2 1 10,000, which is technically guaranteed not to be increased.
Huang Zhen said that the virtual currency represented by Bitcoin adopts blockchain and encryption technology, which is called "decentralized" and "completely anonymous". However, due to the lack of value support, sharp price fluctuations, low transaction efficiency, huge energy consumption and other limitations, it is difficult to play the role of money in daily economic activities. At present, many countries in the world are trying to curb and suppress the encrypted digital tokens based on blockchain, such as Bitcoin, and at the same time, they are accelerating the research on digital currency, the central bank supported by national credit.
According to Yi Gang, at present, 1 10 countries have carried out CBDC related work to varying degrees. For China, the research and development of digital RMB is mainly to meet the demand of domestic retail payment, improve the development level of inclusive finance, and improve the operating efficiency of monetary and payment systems.
At the same time, the China government has taken decisive measures against illegal transactions such as bitcoin. Huang Zhen said that the the State Council Financial Stability Board called for cracking down on bitcoin mining and trading, and resolutely prevented individual risks from being transmitted to the social field.
In fact, as early as 20 17, China began to crack down on virtual currencies such as bitcoin. According to Liu Xiaoyu, in September 2065438+2007, seven departments, including the People's Bank of China, emphasized in the Announcement on Preventing the Financing Risks of Token Issuance that the financing subject raised so-called "virtual currencies" such as Bitcoin and Ethereum from investors through the illegal sale and circulation of tokens, which was essentially illegal and unauthorized public financing. The above announcement defines Bitcoin and Ethereum as "virtual currency"; It is also pointed out that "virtual currency" is not issued by the monetary authorities and has no monetary attributes such as legal compensation and coercion, which excludes the legal attributes of "virtual currency" as "currency".