Another Digital Yuan Giveaway Will See $2.75m Distributed in China’s Fuzhou
China’s digital yuan pilot continues to gather pace: The nation’s central bank is teaming up with an e-commerce heavyweight in an effort to boost adoption. The parties will be giving away another $2.75m worth of coins (in e-voucher form) in the city of Fuzhou, in China’s Fujian Province.
Per the Southeast Express, a Fujian Province-based newspaper, over 200,000 central bank digital currency (CBDC) “coupons” will be issued this month to individuals who must be “geographically located” in Fuzhou at the time of application.
They will need to register their interest via the JD.com app – with the e-commerce giant distributing the tokens daily until November 30 on a random basis.
The catch is that the central People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and JD.com do not seem to want to allow recipients to HODL their coins. They have built-in technology that means that the digital yuan “coupons” will expire if they are not spent on the day they were sent.
Furthermore, the coins can only be redeemed on the JD.com platform, and delivery addresses must also be within Fuzhou.
JD.com is one of China’s biggest e-commerce platforms, and the company has been particularly active in the digital yuan pilot since it joined in 2020 – adding the coin as a payment option in the pilot zones. It has also engaged in similar giveaway events in other pilot cities.
Digital Yuan Giveaways – Driving Adoption in More Cities?
Fuzhou was added to the pilot back in April this year, along with the cities of Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Xiamen.
Financial, industrial, and technological hubs like Shanghai and Shenzhen are also in the pilot zone. Uptake in giveaway events like Fuzhou’s has been high in other cities. In July, over 2.6 million of Shenzhen’s 18 million population registered for a similar event.
And the city has wasted little time in its efforts to make its mark on the pilot. The city’s Fuzhou University of International Studies and Trade became the first entity to make a digital yuan-powered land transaction last month when it paid some $7.14 million for a plot of land.
The deal was carried out in conjunction with the state-owned Agricultural Bank of China, one of the banks that has been working with the PBoC on the CBDC since its early days.
