One of China's largest and most important banks, Postal Savings Bank, is experimenting with DCEP, developing a biometric hardware wallet for the country's future digital currency.
China's bet on its CBDC continues to advance and consolidate, as the year and the expected date for its official launch approaches. Since 2020, China has implemented numerous public tests in several of the country's major cities, submitting its CBDC digital currency, known as the DCEP or digital yuan, to as many scenarios as possible, to test the functioning and feasibility of its digital currency in different environments. Throughout these tests, the nation has also been implementing new functionalities for the currency, and even launched a network of test ATMs to carry out buying, selling and exchanging operations for its digital yuan.
Now, the nation is empowered with a new way to spend digital yuan, developed by the Postal Savings Bank, a bank with more than 100 years of history in the country.
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More than DCEP in a biometric hardware wallet
El hardware wallet, or physical wallet, developed by the Postal Savings Bank for the DCEP of China, consists of a physical card that integrates a biometric sensor for reading fingerprints that facilitates and accelerates the process of verifying the identity of users. According to the report According to a local media outlet, the new hardware wallet has already been tested by a 60-year-old citizen in Beijing, who used the wallet-card to pay for goods and products purchased at an authorized merchant during public tests conducted on the eve of the Spring Festival in Beijing.
Through this card, citizens were able to “complete their health status” and pay for products by verifying all transaction data from the wallet-card screen.
“The display window on the card immediately showed the transaction amount and balance.”
The new physical wallet for China's digital currency, in addition to facilitating the use of the digital yuan that the government distributed in the form of a lottery, also allows access to health services, and to check the status of these, guaranteeing security and health protection to citizens. According to the Postal Savings Bank, the wallet-card facilitates the spending of DCEP for the elderly population of China, who have difficulty using the digital wallet application on smartphones.
Internationalization of the yuan
China has been working on building its digital currency for several years, but it was in 2020 that it accelerated its development. Since mid-year, the Asian nation began to carry out all kinds of tests, public and private, to evaluate the behavior of the digital yuan, and so far in 2021 it has seen the creation of digital and physical wallets, the implementation of offline payments, and many more innovations. As for wallets, the first of these was developed by the Agricultural Bank at the beginning of the month, and now the card-type wallet presented by the Postal Savings Bank.
China's central bank also celebrated the creation and registration of a service company in conjunction with SWIFT, the global organization and network for interbank financial settlement and communications. The new company, called Finance Gateway Information Service Limited, is a solid step by the nation to advance its plans to internationalize the yuan as a global currency. The Central Bank of China holds 45% of the shares of this company through various affiliated entities, while SWIFT controls the remaining 55% of the shares.
The official launch of the DCEP or digital yuan will take place during the Winter Olympics, to be held in Beijing next year.
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