Digital RMB Highlights China’s Largest Trade Event

China’s leading exhibition in the field of trade in services is in progress with a digital RMB avenue on site. 

This year’s edition of the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) is the first time that the event, in its seven sessions, will have such an area dedicated to the digital yuan, or the digital currency electronic payment (DC/EP) project.

CIFTIS, which is also the largest comprehensive exhibition in the field of global trade in services covering the 12 sectors of trade in services defined by the World Trade Organization, started in Beijing on Sept 3 and is expected to run till Tuesday Sept 7. 

143 domestic and foreign financial institutions were reportedly invited to participate in the event. Meanwhile, it is reported that the event has so far attracted more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52% from 2020, and representatives from 153 countries and regions compared to 148 last year.

President Xi Jinping, in his remarks at the event’s opening, said China will further improve rules for the services sector, supporting localities in piloting the alignment of domestic rules with the ones in high-standard international free trade agreements and in building demonstration zones of digital trade. 

The digital yuan has been emerging gradually in trade scenes including for cross-border payments.

The RMB exhibition area at CIFTIS was set up to showcase the latest developments in the use of the digital currency as a “one-stop shop” platform.

The digital RMB avenue is one of the many highlights of the financial exhibition in addition to the other eight major exhibition areas and series of digital financial carnival events being held to enrich the audience’s financial experience.

Amongst other things, it presents China with the opportunity to continue its quest to make the world know more about its DC/EP project even as the country prepares for the public rollout supposedly during the 2022 Winters Olympics in Beijing. 

The avenue, within the “digital financial demonstration zone” which is jointly created by the Fengtai District and the Digital Research Institute with six major banks and institutions such as Ant, Tencent, JD.com, Huawei, Ziguang Guowei, Huada Electronics, and Hengbao, is also to demonstrate the convenience of shopping with the digital currency to the audience.

Some of the demonstrations include China Construction Bank’s digital RMB dual offline payment, while the Bank of China unveiled the  use of digital RMB visual chip wallets which will facilitate Chinese and foreign tourists’ spending while in Beijing. The Postal Savings Bank of China launched a digital RMB visual card hard wallet with superimposed health codes for elderly people to make health status queries with just a single scan. 

There are also intelligent welcoming robots and automatic coffee-making robots at the zone to attract visitors to try digital currencies.

The demonstrations aim to add to efforts to improve the public’s awareness of e-CNY which has been in the pilot phase for over a year and has been trialled in various major cities and in different formats including with mobile, card and B2B transactions.

The avenue is to create consumption scenes for users to experience using the digital currency to shop conveniently on-site such as in unmanned supermarkets and mobile convenience in an interactive way.