eCNY: China charges ahead with a new digital currency
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By Nathaniel Popper and Cao Li
March 2, 2021 — 10.25am
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Annabelle Huang recently won a government lottery to try China’s latest economics experiment: a national digital currency.
After joining the lottery through the social media app WeChat, Huang, 28, a business strategist in Shenzhen, received a digital envelope with 200 electronic Chinese yuan, or eCNY, worth around $US30 ($38.58). To spend it, she went to a convenience store near her office and picked out some nuts and yoghurt. Then she pulled up a QR code for the digital currency from inside her bank app, which the store scanned for payment.