The CBDC of the People’s Bank of China made more transactions than Visa, the official payment processor at the Winter Olympics.
The digital yuan issued by the Central Bank of China made more transactions than VISA for the first time on the opening day of the Winter Olympics held at the national stadium in Beijing. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The performance of the e-CNY is despite the fact that Visa has exclusive rights as the primary payment processor at the games. This monopoly which the payment processor has enjoyed for 36 years has practically been broken by China’s CBDC.
A New Alternative
Prior to this Winter Olympics in China, participants at the games previously had just two options when it came to making payments at the games. These are Visa and fiat. But the introduction of the e-CNY has added yet another option for the users.
The introduction of the e-CNY is not a breach of Visa’s exclusive rights as the payment processor at the games, according to officials of the organizing committee who were responding to questions from journalists.
They emphasized that the CBDC is an extension of China’s national currency. As of November last year, e-CNY had processed transactions valued at $9.7 billion with 140 million users signed up to use it.
A License for A Trillion Dollar Market
Visa is also planning to integrate the e-CNY to its payment platform after acquiring the necessary license from the country. This will give the company access to China’s $16.5 trillion card payment market. Visa is popular in the US and UK and has a capacity of 65,000 transactions in a second.
The organizers of the Olympics highlighted China’s CBDC as a tool that would help to minimize p2p contact in the course of the game as the impact of the Covid19 pandemics is still fresh in the memory of most people in the country and the global community.
The attraction that the e-CNY has among users is that it has lower transaction fees. However, the use of bank cards loaded with the e-CNY has been criticized as blurring the distinction between the CBDC and Visa, which holds the exclusive rights as the payment processor of the games.
That the e-CNY charges zero fees for international payments gave it an edge over Visa. No wonder, China’s digital yuan easily surpassed Visa in the number of daily transactions.
