In Brief:
- Tencent updated WeChat Pay wallet to add support for digital yuan.
- The move can be a huge booster for the digital yuan project.
- Anyone in the supported areas will be able to download and register to use the nation’s digital currency through this app.
Tencent, a Chinese technology behemoth, has updated its WeChat Pay wallet to include support for the country’s digital yuan. Tencent said on Wednesday that its proprietary mobile wallet WeChat Pay will begin taking digital yuan payments.
Since 2014, China has been working on a digital yuan, but it has yet to be adopted statewide. It will gain a big boost if people start paying for goods and services with WeChat, which has over 1 billion users.
Linghao Bao, an analyst at consultancy firm Trivium China, told CNBC, “Chinese consumers are so locked in WeChat Pay and Alipay, it’s not realistic to convince them to switch to a new mobile payment app. So it makes sense for the central bank to team up with WeChat Pay and Alipay as opposed to doing it on its own.”
WeChat may be unfamiliar to users outside of China, yet it is widely used within the world’s second-largest economy. It’s nicknamed a “mega app” because it encapsulates a variety of services. People may utilise WeChat Pay to chat, pay bills, and order food or transportation.
WeChat Pay has a monthly active user base of approximately 800 million people and the users can now pay with “digital renminbi,” via a new access point that has been included into the app. To do so, customers must first go through identity verification via the e-CNY app, the central bank’s digital yuan wallet tool. The app’s pilot version was released earlier this week.
The digital yuan is set to see its biggest test to date at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which starts on Feb. 4. This will be the first time international visitors will have access to this digital currency.
