Image source： China Visual

BEIJING, April 26 (TMTPOST) —?Civil servants in Changshu city, eastern China’s Jiangsu province will receive their salaries in digital yuan in May, which has become a top trending topic in social media.

A few days ago, a notice issued by the Changshu government stated that they will pay the salaries of civil servants and staff of public institutions and state-owned units at all levels in Changshu in digital yuan, starting from May.

Changshu previously started a digital yuan pilot program in the city, and the digital yuan can be used in many consumptionscenarios. More than 7,000 merchant stores are accepting digital yuan payments in Changshu up to now, and the cumulative number of transactions exceeds 2 million and the transaction amount exceeds 70 million RMB ($10 million).

Changshu is not the first place to hand out salaries in digital yuan, as several regions in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province have already use digital RMB for salary payment. When the first pilot areas of digital yuan were unveiled in 2020, Xiangcheng District, Suzhou City, announced that part of the monthly salaries of staff in public institutions would be paid in the form of digital yuan since May 2020. In July of the same year, the staff of 59 municipal departments, administrative and institutional units in eight districts and towns, as well as the staff of state-owned enterprises in Taicang, a county-level city under Suzhou City, used digital yuan to pay their salaries.

A digital yuan pilot document issued by Suzhou Xiangcheng District recently read that Suzhou Xiangcheng District in 2023 will continue to expand digital yuan applications and increase the volume, explore and promote the large-scale replication of various innovative application scenarios and strive to reach a cumulative digital yuan transaction amount of 250 billion yuan ($36 billion) in 2023. The proportion of annual general public budget expenditure using digital yuan in all departments and sectors exceeds 40%, and the digital yuan has covered all scenarios including utilities and other livelihood services.

Suzhou City has made a lot of moves in promoting digital yuan in the past two years. For example, the first batch of digital yuan provident fund loans in the country and the first in the province were issued. The first digital yuan electricity bill settlement of hundreds of millions of yuan was realized in the country. The pilot digital yuan application was carried out in the Suzhou government’s online procurement mall, and Card-Based Digital Yuan Wallet was used for handing out pensions.

In addition to Suzhou, many other cities across Jiangsu province have been making efforts to pilot digital yuan scenarios in the past two years. "These are digital yuan application scenarios led by local governments, which also indirectly show that digital RMB facilitates local government functions and thus local governments are willing to apply it," said informed sources.

The People's Bank of China, China’s central bank, which has been studying the digital currency since 2014, officially launced the pilot program in late 2019.