Chinese State-Owned Bank Offers Test Interface for PBoC Central Bank Digital Currency

The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), one of the nation’s four state-owned banking giants, is trialing a test interface for the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Screenshots of an internal mobile application developed by the ABC, initially seen circulating on WeChat on Tuesday and later verified by CoinDesk, shows the banking giant has already developed a front-end interface of how users could potentially interact with China’s CBDC – also known as DC/EP.

The move hints at the acceleration of the development and deployment work of rolling out the DC/EP. CoinDesk exclusively reported last year that the People’s Bank of China had been developing the system with the involvement of the country’s four big state-owned banks as well as payments giants Ant Financial and Tencent.

The testing application, which is also available for download on iOS and Android mobile devices via a site on ABC’s domain, offers a peek into the features that will be offered through a DC/EP wallet, including paying via a QR code, receiving and sending payments and initiating transactions by touching another user’s phone.

The application also offers users a registration option. However, it appears the registration function is so far in test mode as it only allows whitelisted users to complete the registration process.

That said, the registration step shows the test is currently being carried out in four Chinese cities including Xiong’An, Suzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen.