Chinese Business Travelers Can Book Their Ticket Using Digital Yuan

The China Merchants Bank collaborated with the Civil Aviation Administration of China to develop a digital yuan platform, through which Chinese business travelers can book their tickets using the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as a payment method.

The new platform aims to encourage entrepreneurs and companies to increasingly depend on the digital yuan as a payment method for business air tickets. Also, the platform will give access to its users for more services using the CBDC.

During the launching ceremony, the Civil Aviation Administration and China Merchants Bank urged for more use cases of the CBDC, saying they will continue to search for more ways to apply the digital yuan in various areas of the civil aviation industry.

Local reports said that Suzhou-based travel company, China Travel Service, started to use the platform to purchase tickets for its clients.

It is worth mentioning that the pilot stage of the Chinese CBDC included railway networks, light rail connections, metro systems, and bus routes. This month, the Jinan Public Transport in Shandong Province updated all its card readers and bus route software to allow passengers to pay for their tickets using CBDCs.

Also, Bank of China, one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in China, introduced a new technology through which citizens use their sim cards to pay in digital yuan.
In a statement, the bank said it is collaborating with telecommunication operators China Telecom and China Unicom to develop this technology to test it this week. Users will be allowed to make payments by their phone after connecting its digital yuan app with what it calls “super SIM cards” that are equipped with a near-field communication function.

During the Spring Festival holidays, Chinese cities, such as Lianyungang, Jinan, and Shenzhen, launched nearly 200 digital yuan activities worth more than 180 million yuan ($26.6 million) to promote its usage.