People's Daily Online, Beijing, January 27 (Reporter Li Tong): "Lucky Tiger Greets Spring with a Gift of Counting Coins", "One Fen Takes the Bus and Subway", "Attractions Punch in, Gather Lucky Draw Red Packets"... With the approaching of the 2022 Spring Festival, digital RMB applications ushered in a new wave. In recent years, every holiday is an opportunity to promote digital RMB. Compared with the past, what new exploration and new functions does digital RMB have during the Spring Festival this year?

The reporter found that since the digital RMB (pilot version) app was officially launched in early January 2022, as of January 27, users had installed more than 10.68 million times. Digital RMB has started full testing, and a new upsurge of digital RMB experience has been set off all over the country. In terms of new functions, the "paste and paste" function in the digital RMB app can read the devices loaded with the digital RMB hardware wallet, provide basic management capabilities such as transfer in, transfer out, and query for the hardware wallet, and realize the "interconnection" of software and hardware wallets.

In terms of application scenarios, the pilot banks of digital RMB are seizing the time nodes of the Spring Festival to enrich the application scenarios of digital RMB. Taking Shenzhen as an example, Industry, Agriculture, China Construction, Communications and Postal Savings Bank respectively released information on digital RMB activities during the New Year's Day and the Spring Festival. Six banks have invested more than 25 million yuan in total to meet the multi-dimensional and all-round consumption needs of citizens in food, housing, transportation, tourism, entertainment and shopping.

In addition to banking institutions, the Internet platform also launched a new scenario of digital RMB application. Following the launch of digital RMB carbon neutrality pilot, Meituan opened digital RMB payment channels during the Spring Festival for more than 200 full scenes of offline consumption including catering, takeout, fresh food retail, bike sharing, hotel tourism, and film performances. JD has also launched the online consumption function of digital RMB hardware wallet.

"Since January this year, nearly 90% of the digital RMB red packets in Meituan's digital RMB pilot have gone to the daily consumption scenes of people's life, such as taking out, shopping for vegetables, catering, etc." Meituan data shows that the proportion of small transaction orders with digital RMB less than 30 yuan is the highest, driving the development of people's livelihood consumption and offline small and micro businesses.

"As of December 31, 2021, there have been more than 8.0851 million digital RMB pilot scenarios, 261 million personal wallets have been opened, and the transaction amount has been 87.565 billion yuan." At the recent press conference held by the State Reform Office, Zou Lan, Director of the Financial Market Department of the People's Bank of China, said that the People's Bank of China has been in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiong'an, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi'an, Qingdao Dalian and other places and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will carry out digital RMB pilot projects, which basically cover the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Beijing Tianjin Hebei and other different regions, and enhance the public's understanding of the design concept of digital RMB.

Li Lihui, the head of the blockchain research group of the China Internet Finance Association and the former president of the Bank of China, believes that the data of the People's Bank of China deserves attention in two aspects. On the one hand, the pilot project of digital RMB has made great and rapid progress; On the other hand, 87.565 billion yuan is equivalent to 0.02% of China's mobile payment amount of 432 trillion yuan in 2020, which shows that the future application prospect of digital RMB is very broad.

"The opening of digital RMB payment in the whole scenario will help speed up the pilot promotion of digital RMB, promote connectivity in the payment field, and facilitate the real enterprises and people's livelihood, which is of positive significance and exemplary role." Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of China Merchants Union Finance, said that the starting point and destination of digital RMB research and development and pilot is to serve the real economy and facilitate people's livelihood.

Wang Pengbo, an analyst in the financial industry of Broadcom Consulting, believes that as digital RMB enters the full scale experimental stage, the new functions and applications of digital RMB during the Spring Festival holiday are full of expectations, which can achieve the "triple win" of pilot institutions, digital RMB promotion and users.