The People's Bank of China has authorized eight more lenders to operate on its digital yuan network, bringing the total number of e-CNY operators to 30. The newly approved banks 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, each of which must complete operational and technical preparations before rolling out e-CNY services to customers.
The expansion continues a steady build-out that began with a late-2019 pilot program and has accelerated sharply this year. As recently as April, the PBOC added twelve city commercial banks to the network, and industry analysts expect the newest cohort of regional lenders to help extend digital yuan access to small and medium-sized enterprises and cross-border trade corridors that larger national banks have been slower to serve.
Since its research phase began back in 2014, the e-CNY program has moved well beyond simple retail payments. It now underpins merchant transactions, public utility billing and government service payments across much of China, and the central bank has signaled it intends to keep widening the operator roster to sharpen competition and improve accessibility for both banks and end users.
A Bigger Play for Cross-Border Settlement
The domestic expansion sits alongside a more consequential push abroad. Central-bank data compiled through the Bank for International Settlements' Project mBridge shows the multi-CBDC settlement platform — whose participants include the PBOC, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, and the central banks of the UAE and Saudi Arabia — has processed roughly $55.49 billion in transaction volume, a nearly 2,500-fold jump from its 2022 pilot. The e-CNY alone accounts for an estimated 95% of that settlement volume, underscoring how much of the platform's early traction has been driven by China's own currency.
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Competing With Stablecoins for Deposits
Beijing has also been sharpening the e-CNY's appeal as a store of value rather than just a payment rail. Starting this year, the PBOC began letting banks pay interest on digital-yuan wallets, a shift that nudges the currency closer to a digital deposit product and gives institutions and individuals a reason to hold e-CNY balances rather than immediately convert them — a direct counter to the yield-free structure of most dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Taken together, the domestic bank additions and the mBridge volume growth point to a coordinated strategy: build out e-CNY's reach inside China's banking system while simultaneously positioning it as the default settlement currency for a cross-border network that could compete with dollar-denominated rails over time.
