Following Alipay’s step, China’s popular social networking and payment app WeChat has also incorporated the digital yuan wallet in order to conduct transactions via the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC). 

CBDCs are a type of digital currency; these digital currencies are centralized or regulated by governments or formal financial institutions. Despite the criticisms CBDCs have received in the past, some countries, like Turkey, Japan, UK, and India, started to deal with CBDCs. 

According to local sources, adding digital yuan to the payment options on the WeChat app aims to help broaden the adoption of digital currency.

WeChat’s digital yuan wallet support will allow users to use the digital yuan to pay for WeChat mini-programs. The pilot version of digital yuan’s “Wallet Quick Payment Management” page now lists WeChat as one of the over 90 merchant platforms you can access. 

With WeChat Pay, one can order food from apps, like McDonald’s, and pay bills by using digital yuan.

To enjoy this feature, users must permit their digital yuan wallet operator to sync their WeChat-bound mobile phone number in order to activate the WeChat payment wallet fast payment function. After that, they can make payments via the WeChat app to various digital yuan-supporting merchants. With time, more integrations will be added to this functionality.

This recent development is not surprising as China has shown enormous interest in the blockchain world previously launching an NFT marketplace, and subsequently a blockchain research center in Beijing. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for what they’ll be doing next!