invezz.com
Chinese city Suzhou has decided to launch what it calls a “red envelope” trial for the country’s impending digital yuan.
This will be the second time a Chinese city will be rolling out a test phase for the digital yuan. Last month another Chinese city Shenzhen rolled out a pilot scheme. From insider reports, the Suzhou district wants to launch the giveaway on the same day as China’s Double 12 chopping event on December 12.
In anticipation of the forthcoming trial scheme, several businesses in the district have set up near-field communication QP codes.
In the first trial scheme held in Shenzhen, there were 10 million digital yuan distributed to about 50,000 beneficiaries of the red envelopes through a lottery format. As reported earlier, about 95 percent of the beneficiaries have already spent their 200 digital yuan prize within two weeks of the prize money is distributed.
Some of the participants even wanted to buy more of the yuan.
But the participants of the Shenzhen trial launch could not use the panda wallets, which is the digital wallet’s “touch” and “offline” functions.
But the Suzhou launch has this functionality, as it enables users and holders of the yuan digital currency to carry out the transfer of transactions. They can do this by tapping their mobile devices, even if the devices are not connected to the network.
Chengdu city will be the next to launch a trial scheme
E-commerce giant Alibaba will be hosting the Double 12 shopping event. It will be coming after the launch of the much-anticipated “Singles Day”. The shopping event will concentrate more on small brands and offline spending than online spending.
Apart from the city of Shenzhen and Suzhou launching their trials, Chengdu city is also planning to roll out its yuan digital currency trial. The venue of the 2022 Winter Olympics has also been billed to participate in another closed pilot scheme. These trials are coming as China prepares to launch its digital yuan. The country with the largest population in the world has been planning to roll out its digital yuan. As it stands, the launch stage will happen after the successful testing schemes from various districts.