HSBC China Breaks Ground with e-CNY Services for Corporate Clients

• Corporate customers may now manage their assets by linking their corporate bank accounts.
• Many consumers are still hesitant to use e-CNY owing to technical and privacy concerns.

HSBC firm’s China subsidiary has begun providing e-CNY services to corporate clients, the firm said. This makes HSBC the first international bank in China to provide services related to the digital currency of the central bank, offering these services to both retail and corporate clients.

The People’s Bank of China issues its digital currency, the e-CNY, which is also called the digital yuan. It is a digital currency that aims to replace a portion of the Chinese yuan (CNY) that is currently in use.

In a statement released on Friday, HSBC Bank (China) Co. Ltd. said that its corporate customers may now manage their assets by linking their corporate bank accounts with digital yuan accounts. According to the bank, it has assisted an educational organization in receiving payments for the company’s six branches in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Jiaxing, and Suzhou in e-CNY.

Ongoing Difficulties

Launched in late 2019, the digital yuan experiment has been extended to dozens of regions around the nation by the central bank, the People’s Bank of China.

The South China Morning Post stated last month that many consumers are still hesitant to pay with the e-CNY largely owing to technical constraints and privacy concerns. This comes after China began paying its state personnel with digital yuan in several locations.

In an effort to encourage more people in the region to adopt the digital yuan, Hong Kong revealed last month that anyone may set up personal e-CNY wallets and use them to make international payments. However, uncertainty surrounds the future of e-CNY. Global adoption of a digital currency backed by a state raises many geopolitical, legislative, and technical concerns.

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