Hong Kong and China test cross-border digital yuan, says PBoC official

China has completed its first cross-border pilots of the digital yuan with Hong Kong.

Wang Xin, director of the People’s Bank of China research bureau, said that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the PBoC have conducted technical tests on the cross-border use of China’s central bank digital currency.

The official announced the news at a Thursday press conference hosted by the State Council Information Office of China, local news agency Sina Finance reports.

The news comes shortly after Mu Changchun, head of the PBoC’s digital currency research institute, proposed a set of global CBDC rules last week. Speaking at a Bank for International Settlements seminar, Mu called on global financial institutions to ensure the global interoperability of national digital currencies.

“Interoperability should be enabled between CBDC systems of different jurisdictions and exchange. The PBoC had shared the proposals with other central banks and monetary authorities,” the official said.

The latest news brings a significant update to China’s aggressive CBDC development. After debuting internal digital yuan pilots in April 2020, the Chinese central bank has been actively pursuing to move its CBDC expertise beyond its own jurisdiction.

As such, the PBoC joined central bank authorities in Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates to explore a cross-border CBDC in February 2021. In late 2020, an official at the HKMA claimed that the regulator and the PBoC were at the preliminary stages of piloting the digital yuan for cross-border payments.

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