China’s central financial institution and the Hong Kong Financial Authority, or HKMA, are within the preliminary levels of piloting the digital yuan for cross-border funds — underscoring one other key growth within the rollout of a central financial institution digital foreign money, or CBDC.

In a media launch that appeared on the HKMA web site on Friday, chief govt Eddie Yue supplied an replace on the continued work surrounding cross-border funds. He indicated that HKMA is in dialogue with the Folks’s Financial institution of China, or PBOC, to start pilot testing the e-CNY.

Yue said:

“The HKMA and the Digital Foreign money Institute of Folks’s Financial institution of China are discussing the technical pilot testing of utilizing e-CNY, the digital renminbi issued by the PBoC, for making cross-border funds, and are making the corresponding technical preparations.”

Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese language vacationers may tremendously profit from e-CNY, Yue says, as a result of it represents the identical worth as money already in circulation. And since the yuan is already utilized in Hong Kong, a digital equal could be a matter of comfort.

China continues to be on the forefront of CBDC growth, with its digital yuan pilots processing $300 million price of transactions as of early November. The primary pilot initiatives have been rolled out throughout 4 main cities in April earlier than increasing to 9 metropolitan areas.

As for Hong Kong, the Particular Administrative Area has been exploring potential use circumstances for CBDCs for at the least the previous three years. As Yue famous, HKMA launched a joint analysis mission with the Financial institution of Thailand in 2019 to handle numerous issues associated to cross-border funds and digital currencies. Yue stated this mission has entered its “second stage,” which seems at operability and scalability of cross-border CBDC participation.

Lengthy-term, Yue says the purpose is to construct an built-in cross-border cost platform for the area:

“From a longer-term perspective, now we have a great likelihood of constructing a regional cross-border cost platform by driving on the worldwide development of strengthening cooperation in cross-border cost.”