China's Digital Yuan Fails to Gain Traction with Hong Kong Visitors – Is China's Digital Currency Facing a Roadblock?
Shenzhen, China started offering physical cards and discounts to Hong Kong tourists in order to drive the cross-border use of its digital yuan - but the first few days seem to have been a bit slow.
Per the state-backed Shenzhen News, the country's first digital yuan hard wallet self-service card issuing machine was officially launched on February 22, providing "convenient" CBDC payment services for people coming to Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
The goal was to issue 50,000 digital yuan hard wallets until March 31. Yet, out of some 7.5 million Hong Kong residents, fewer than 1,000 have so far used this option. Citing data from the Shenzhen branch of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the report stated that,
As of February 26, 625 Hong Kong residents have applied for a digital yuan hard wallet.
As part of the promotional efforts, users can get a 20% discount when spending at some 1,400 designated merchants in Luohu District with the so-called "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area-themed digital yuan hard wallet". Luohu is a district of Shenzhen on the crossing between Hong Kong and the mainland.
Tourists can get the "Greater Bay Area" physical card, issued by the Bank of China, within minutes at dedicated machines at the Loohu border crossing. It is topped up with an Octopus card, which is Hong Kong’s dominant cashless payments system for public transport and retail, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday.
A branch official was quoted as saying that the bank planned to explore "more forms of digital currency wallets," including integrating wallets into SIM cards to enable visitors from Hong Kong to use the same card for communication and payment.
As reported, in mid-February, Shenzhen began a retail-focused
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