Nearly 1 in 5 Chinese have e-CNY wallets

As Nocash presents, the financial sector, both in China and abroad, is interested in how quickly consumers in a large economy will adopt a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. For their part, other countries’ governments — 79 of which are in the process of researching, developing or deploying their own CBDCs — are observing the e-CNY pilot to see how quickly government-sponsored digital money might replace both cash and private forms of digital money.

A combined 44% of Chinese adults say they don’t use the e-CNY app because they either don’t need it (27%) or prefer using another form of digital payment (17%). But another 26% say they don’t use it because they don’t know how, and 13% cite technical barriers like not residing in a pilot city (9%) or not having a smartphone that supports the app (4%). This paints a different picture, one in which investments in educating consumers on its use and rolling the pilot out more widely could result in large gains in user uptake.