China to Hold Second Lottery Trial of the Digital Yuan

Nov 23, 2020 at 8:38 a.m. UTCUpdated Nov 23, 2020 at 8:39 a.m. UTC

(Valeri Potapova/Shutterstock)

A city in China will hold the second lottery of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) next month.

On Dec. 12, a shopping festival known as “Double 12” in China, the city of Suzhou will hold a giveaway designed to gauge usability of the digital yuan, according to a report from local news source The Paper on Monday.
The trial will be similar to one held in Shenzhen in October, that allowed residents to apply for a 200 yuan share of 10 million units of the CBDC in a kind of lottery, worth around $1.5 million in total.
The Suzhou event will trial additional aspects of the technology not activated in Shenzhen, including the digital yuan’s offline feature that allows users to touch smart devices to make transfers.
The Paper reported that “many” businesses in the Xiangcheng district of Suzhou have already installed point-of-sales tech with NFC (near-field communication) and QR code capabilities allowing the digital yuan winnings to be spent.
The report also indicates that another city, Chengdu, is holding a closed beta trial of the CBDC, allowing invited participants to use a digital wallet for transactions via a “major bank.”