Carrying out pilot research and development of E-CNY is a major strategic deployment made by the Party Central Committee and the State Council. The Hebei Provincial Party Committee and the People’s Government of Hebei Province attach great importance to the pilot work of E-CNY, and incorporate accelerating the promotion of digital currency pilot into the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan of Hebei Province. In 2019, since the pilot work of Xiong’an New Area and Zhangjiakou District of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Hebei was carried out, People’s Bank of China, together with operating agencies, has made a thorough deployment and orderly progress, continuously innovated application scenarios, and dynamically improved business design. The pilot work has progressed smoothly and remarkable results has been achieved. In Dec. 2022, with the strong support of the head office of People’s Bank of China and the approval of the State Council, the pilot scope of Hebei from Xiong’an New Area and Zhangjiakou City to the whole province was decided to expand, becoming the first batch of provinces in China to expand the pilot scope.

E-CNY is the legal tender in digital form issued by People’s Bank of China. The People’s Bank of China is responsible for issuance, cancellation, inter-institutional interconnection and wallet ecological management, and prudently selects commercial banks with certain conditions in terms of capital and technology as the designated operating institutions to take the lead in providing E-CNY exchange services. E-CNY is a retail central bank digital currency issued to the public. With the modern development of domestic payment system, its launch will meet the daily payment needs of the public, improve efficiency of the retail payment system, and reduce retail payment costs of the whole society.

Continuous optimization to meet the diversified payment needs of the masses

In order to steadily promote the pilot work of E-CNY in Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang Central Sub-branch of People’s Bank of China has established a multi-level and multi-dimensional pilot structure.

Shijiazhuang Central Sub-branch of People’s Bank of China led the establishment of leading group for the pilot work of E-CNY in Hebei, and established an organizational mechanism for the overall guidance of government, the organization and coordination of People’s Bank of China, the construction of operating agencies, and the broad participation of the public, to promote the pilot work of E-CNY in Hebei, serve the economic development and facilitate the people’s life.

On the previous pilot results, Shijiazhuang Central Sub-branch of People’s Bank of China carried out integrated innovation, explored the establishment of multi-domain application scenarios of E-CNY, optimized the layout of the entire digital consumption chain, expanded and promoted the application of E-CNY, and created a model pilot with Hebei recognition. It also established E-CNY circulation ecosystem with multiple participation, co-construction and sharing so as to improve the level of digital services, accelerate the adjustment of industrial digital layout in Hebei Province, improve the public payment conditions, and strive to complete the overall goal of building a strong economic province and beautiful Hebei.

With the positioning that the application of E-CNY is mainly to meet the demand for retail payment in the field of people’s livelihood, Shijiazhuang Central Sub-branch of People’s Bank of China actively explores the application and promotion of E-CNY in the field of people’s livelihood, speeds up the expansion of the coverage of E-CNY acceptance, and breaks the bottleneck of acceptance and payment through market forces. From large businesses, chain supermarkets, catering, culture and tourism, education and medical care Public transport and others close to people’s livelihood, and around food, housing, transportation, travel, entertainment, purchase and payment scenarios, the sub-branch improves the acceptance environment to achieve the coverage of E-CNY acceptance services.

Easy to use, no need to pay formalities and transaction costs

“E-CNY is the digital form of cash, and the carrier of E-CNY is E-CNY wallet, which is the digital form of wallet that people usually use.” Li Renfei, Monetary Gold and Silver Department of Shijiazhuang Central Sub-branch of People’s Bank of China, introduced, “The use of E-CNY is like the use of cash in the wallet. It does not require transaction fees and does not generate interest, especially when merchants receive E-CNY, they do not pay any fees.”

E-CNY wallets include personal wallets and corporate wallets. Take opening personal wallet as an example. You need to download the E-CNY app through the mobile app store and register to open it. The whole registration process takes less than one minute. After opening a personal digital wallet, users can recharge the wallet through bank card and mobile banking transfer.

“When you pay, you can scan the code by showing E-CNY app, and you can also open the NFC function of your mobile phone to touch. The collection and payment are basically the same. You can also transfer to other people’s E-CNY wallets, and directly enter the other person’s mobile phone number or wallet number to transfer.” Li Renfei stressed that there is no handling charge for the use of E-CNY, including transferring money to your own bank account, and there is no transaction charge.

Unique advantages, improving the quality and efficiency of the real economy, and enabling the development of digital economy

As a financial public product, E-CNY is integrated with digital economy of Hebei Province, which can help improve the quality and efficiency of real economy by its unique advantages such as high efficiency, low cost, security and limited anonymity. It can also promote the main body of digital industry to understand the research and development ideas of E-CNY, carry out application scenario innovation, and add vitality to the development of digital economy.

The pilot project of E-CNY in Hebei helps to promote the integration of regional public services, systems and mechanisms, expand the area of E-CNY barrier-free payment, bridge the gap between the application time of E-CNY in Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, promote service linkage, co-construction and sharing, and reduce the investment in research and development of public service platforms and decentralized operation and maintenance costs. Integrating the promotion, application, supervision and management of E-CNY into strategic layout of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration quickly will promote the integration process of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei system and mechanism and avoid repeated design of systems, platforms, mechanisms and systems.

As an emerging financial infrastructure, E-CNY can empower the digital economy industry, push forward the blockchain, Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other information technology enterprises to become bigger and stronger, and promote industrial optimization and upgrading. With the advantages of inclusive and low-cost E-CNY, a modern social governance system will be built and the risk supervision and control mechanism will be improved by enriching the integration and application of E-CNY with public management platforms such as finance and taxation.

The integration of E-CNY and Hebei Province’s industrial digitalization strategy helps to deeply explore big data and expand the strategic value of digital management. The application of E-CNY can help SMEs with incomplete financial information to strengthen the analysis and application of financial data, and explore the potential of enterprises to improve production efficiency and save production costs. It is conducive to establishing a more safe, efficient and convenient penetrating transfer payment mode, ensuring that government payments reach enterprises and residents directly, improving the efficiency of funds and policies, and making sure the operation of funds benefiting enterprises and people in the open. The application of E-CNY in special construction, real estate and other capital supervision fields will improve the supervision efficiency of functional departments, help to optimize the administrative management efficiency and prevent risks and achieve a win-win situation between government and enterprises.