PBOC Widens Digital Yuan Roster to 30 in Push Under Five-Year Plan

The new operators are Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, China Bohai Bank, Bank of Shanghai, Bank of Hangzhou, Huishang Bank, Bank of Changsha and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank. Three of the eight are national joint-stock commercial banks – a regulatory tier of shareholding lenders that sit between China's Big Six state-owned banks and its city commercial banks, with ownership ranging from largely state-controlled (Hengfeng, Bohai) to conglomerate-linked (Ping An Bank).

All eight have been connected to the PBOC's digital renminbi system and will begin customer services after completing technical preparations, the central bank said in a 17 Aug statement.

The move comes as Beijing bars private stablecoins on the mainland and pushes the state-issued e-CNY as its answer to dollar-pegged tokens that dominate onchain cross-border flows across Asia.

Deposit money shift

Every new entrant is a commercial lender, a pattern that follows the framework the PBOC put in place on 1 Jan. That overhaul redefined the digital yuan from digital cash to "digital deposit money," allowing verified e-CNY wallets to earn interest, bringing balances into banks' asset-liability books, and extending deposit insurance protection. Non-bank payment providers, by contrast, must hold customer reserves entirely in digital yuan at a 100% ratio.

Reform plan trigger

The expansion also lands a week after the PBOC published its 15th Five-Year reform and development plan on 10 Aug, a sectoral blueprint under China's overarching national Five-Year Plan – the top-down policy framework Beijing has used since 1953 to set economic and industrial priorities. The document listed steady e-CNY development among the central bank's core tasks for 2026 to 2030 alongside deeper cross-border renminbi connectivity. It is the PBOC's first solo five-year blueprint in at least a decade.

Wang Pengbo, chief financial-industry analyst at Botong Consulting, told Caijing magazine that the sector is in "a critical stage moving from pilot exploration towards routine application," and expects regulators to continue to add shareholding and to lead city commercial banks to broaden coverage and intensify competition.

Cross-border push

Domestic operator growth is running in parallel with the international leg. On 16 Jun, the PBOC's International Operation Center, a Shanghai-based entity that operates under the guidance of the PBOC's Digital Currency Institute, signed direct-participant agreements with 26 institutions for the Cross-border e-CNY Transfer Services (CBETS) platform. On 24 Jul, ICBC Shanghai and ICBC Singapore settled the first live CBETS payment, moving nearly 10mn yuan ($1.47mn) in shipping fees the same day for a subsidiary of a state-owned enterprise that imports iron ore.

Provincial policy is aligning. On 6 Aug, Guangdong published a draft 2026 to 2030 plan for its pilot free trade zone that calls for expanded cross-border e-CNY trials, larger Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect pilots and closer integration with offshore finance. Public consultation closes on 5 Sept.

Mu Changchun, head of the PBOC's Digital Currency Research Institute, disclosed in June that mBridge, China's multilateral CBDC platform, had settled close to 500bn yuan ($69bn) cumulatively, with the digital yuan accounting for about 95% of volume.

As of 30 November 2025, the e-CNY had processed 3.48bn transactions worth 16.7trn yuan ($2.38trn) cumulatively since the pilot began in 2019.