Beijing (PingWest)—Meituan Dianping, the Chinese food delivery platform backed by Tencent, is in talks with a research wing of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to negotiate the trial of the central bank digital currency, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The specifics of the collaboration are not yet known, said the report.
Listed in Hong Kong, Meituan Dianping is China's largest food delivery platform by market share. It currently boasts of more than 435 million active users and billions of dollars of daily transactions. This creates a huge opportunity for the mass adoption of the digital yuan, which is also referred to as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment or DCEP.
The research wing of PBOC, known as Digital Currency Research Institute, was set up by the central bank six years ago to explore the possibility of launching its own digital currency to cut the costs of circulating traditional paper money and boost policymakers’ control of money supply.
In the meantime, Bilibili, a Tencent-backed video streaming platform, is reportedly in discussions with the central bank to test the digital currency. Recently, Didi, the largest ride-hailing applications in China, also joined the project.
The Chinese government had started drafting laws for governing the circulation of the DCEP in March this year. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's progress in testing and publishing its digital currency only achieved a faster pace.
In April, leaked UI screenshots showed that China’s four largest state-owned commercial banks have been on development and test run for a wallet application that’ll be used to store, send and receive the DCEP, according to the cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk.
Last month, the former vice-chair of the PBOC’s National Council for Social Security Fund, Wang Zhongmin, had announced that China had completed the backend development of the DCEP.