Bank Exec says digital yuan will work with WeChat and Alipay. Mu Changchun, head of the digital currency research institute of the People’s Bank of China, said that the digital yuan backed by the central bank would work well with major mobile payment wallets, such as WeChat Pay and Alipay.
According to a report from South China Morning Post, Mu said during a conference that the digital yuan will not compete with WeChat Pay and Alipay “They don’t belong to the same dimension. WeChat and Alipay are wallets, while the digital yuan is the money in the wallet.”
These recent statements seem to contradict earlier reports from local sources suggesting that as an alternative to the two payment giants, China could launch its digital currency.
Presently, only limited users have access to the digital yuan through an exclusive mobile wallet application. At the conference, Mu said that the mobile wallets for digital yuan face the age-old problem of counterfeiting, stating that there were multiple fake digital yuan wallets in the market.
He said the effect of counterfeit wallets could only be minimised if all parties involved, from the central bank to the consumers, took the required precautions. Mu said, on a separate note, that the digital yuan works on a centralised infrastructure, separating it from private currencies such as Libra and Bitcoin (BTC) on Facebook.
[image: Markus Winkler]
