It’s been another busy week for China’s central bank’s ( CBDC ) digital currency, the digital yuan, with the token finding new use cases in the areas of government housing aid transactions.
Xinhua Daily reported that the Jiangsu Provincial Government Affairs Office has started using CBDC in 10 new “application scenarios”.
The same news agency reported that banks and the local government of the city of Nanjing have begun the “integrated use of digital yuan” in the housing sector.
In China, the Housing Provident Fund (HPF) system is a mandatory mutual aid platform.
It was designed to help people finance their homes.
The authorities said they have issued a set of instructions to enable market participants to learn how to use CBDC in their HPF operations.
The guidelines will allow banks, employees and citizens to use digital yuan in housing fund accounts.
These same instructions also explain how to use the coin in settlement, financing and accounting.
HPF control centers in “various locations” will be able to use “online payments in digital yuan and streamlined business processes,” the media explained.
Jiangsu authorities added that the digital yuan was used in more than 5,500 transactions.
Those transactions paid off settlements totaling about $204 million, they added.
The coin is also used to pay experts to “appraise” government projects.
Other new use cases include “settlement fees for government property rights transactions” as well as “deposits for government asset leases.”
Meanwhile, the city of Suzhou has launched a digital yuan-based loan platform for construction project contractors.
CBDC is reportedly being used as a payment tool in “more than ten government resource trading centers and sub-centres” across the pilot area.
On April 6, a RMB digital wallet owned by the Yancheng City State Resource Trading Center was used to process more than $2.5 million in “bid deposits for state asset transfer projects.”
The People’s Bank of China said it would “actively promote the use” of its token in “government procurement, project bidding, property rights transactions and other transaction sectors.”
Earlier this month, the city of Nanjing announced that its residents had opened more than 310,000 personal yuan digital wallets to date.
