According to People’s Daily, civil servants in Changshu in Jiangsu province in China will begin receiving their salaries in digital yuan from May 2023, when China's CBCD will begin to be used for day-to-day payments.
Changshu isn't the first Chinese city to pay salaries in digital yuan. According to the local government report, employees of public institutions in Taicang, which is also a city under the jurisdiction of Suzhou, began to be paid in digital yuan in June 2022.
Many initiatives have been taken to promote the use of China’s CBDC. WeChat, China’s leading social network and payment app, integrated digital yuan into its payment platform in early March. WeChat Pay allows digital yuan payments in some apps; for example, users can order from McDonald's and pay their bills using digital yuan. Direct CBDC transactions between WeChat users are also expected to begin soon. Alipay, China's largest third-party payment platform managed by Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, also began accepting digital yuan payments in Dec. 2022, allowing users to pay using digital yuan on Taobao, China's leading online shopping platform, among many other e-commerce apps. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has distributed millions of dollars worth of digital yuan across the country in the new year to boost its use. Around 200 events for e-CNY took place across the country during the holiday period. These events were held to “promote consumption” for the first time since the Chinese government eased COVID-19 restrictions. Moreover, the offline payment feature for digital yuan was launched on Jan. 23, allowing users to pay without an internet connection or electricity, using NFC technology to confirm payments.
