Alipay is one of the world’s most popular e-payment and 3rd party mobile platforms, and it was established in early 2004 in the Hangzhou district of China. It functions under the Alibaba Group and Jack Ma, the founder. Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, is the one that owns the mobile payment platform.
Most recently, Alipay made headlines when it announced that it should be enabling certain users to have their respective accounts be linked to the nation’s CBDC application, namely the digital yuan. As the race for central bank digital currencies continues, China is adamant that it remains at the forefront in terms of technological and practical progress and development, and with that in mind, Alipay is all set on helping the abovementioned users do their part to help China as far as the digital yuan’s eventual launch is concerned.
MYbank playing a key role
MYbank is one of the biggest Internet-only financial institutions and banks in China, and it has been through its continued contributions towards the nation’s CBDC testing protocols that the digital yuan has been relatively quite successful as of late. Furthermore, Ant Group is also taking part in the country’s CBDC project, thereby confirming that the conglomerate does indeed have a majority stake as far as MYbank is concerned.
Ant Group had officially stated that, in collaboration with MYbank, digital yuan trials would be accelerated without compromising on the quality, continued research support, and development. Moreover, the widely significant People’s Bank of China (PBoC) will also be kept in the loop.
Testing continues
The PBoC has been working with Ant Group on the country’s digital currencies for over four years now, and the nation’s central bank has been utilizing the firm’s aforementioned mobile application development and environment in an effort to generate apps that will be directly linked to the digital yuan.
Also, in addition to MYbank, WeBank has not yet been able to provide any kind of link to its customers as far as connecting with the CBDC goes. Nevertheless, both banks were chosen to participate in testing the ecosystem and environment for the digital yuan this past February. It should be mentioned, however, that testing for the CBDC has been mainly taken over by six state banks, among which some have even gone as far as creating digital yuan wallets for their users.
Nevertheless, progress and widespread domestic adoption for the digital yuan continue. In fact, in just the previous month, JD.com had made it known that the digital yuan was being employed to pay the salaries for the staff.