JD.com is China’s first online mall to pilot digital yuan. China’s second-largest online retailer, JD.com, will become the country’s first virtual mall to use digital yuan, a cryptocurrency backed by the central bank.
JD Digits, the e-commerce giant’s fintech affiliate, said on its official WeChat account that it is set to launch a pilot program this month, in which customers will pay for certain items using the digital yuan. About 100,000 digital cash vouchers, worth 20 million yuan in total will be issued to residents of Suzhou city in the eastern province of Jiangsu on Dec. 11.
According to Reuters, there will be a total of 10,000 winners this time around who will be able to spend the tokens at stores that are set up with point-of-sales technology that can handle the CBDC.
The Suzhou lottery kicks of on Dec. 12 – a shopping festival known as “Double 12” – and is said to be trialing functionality of the token including offline (phone-to-phone) payments.
