The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and insurance giant Ping An are leveraging the digital yuan to compensate healthcare workers in the Nanshan District of Shenzhen City affected by the coronavirus.
Employees of hospitals and clinics in Nanshan District will enter into insurance contracts with Ping An. According to this agreement, if they are diagnosed with COVID-19, they will receive a certain amount in digital yuan in their electronic wallet.
In the event of the death of a medical worker due to coronavirus, the insurance company is obliged to pay his family a cash benefit in China’s state digital currency. Ping An will continue to explore in more detail the potential of the digital yuan and the possibility of leveraging it for other insurance benefits.
Wang Peng, assistant professor at the Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence at the People’s University of China, believes this initiative is important. The introduction of the digital yuan into insurance will expand its capabilities far beyond e-commerce and retail payments. This testing will demonstrate more complex use cases for government stablecoin.
“The number of users making payments with the digital yuan is growing. Therefore, the market is becoming more mature, and the options for using the digital yuan can be different: financial and social services and even securities trading, ”Peng said in an interview with local reporters.
The Chinese authorities have repeatedly tested the digital yuan in various cities in the form of a free “lottery”. In addition, the NBK plans to test its upcoming Winter Olympics in 2022. This has become another reason for the emergence of geopolitical tensions between China and the United States. This week, US senators called on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to ban US athletes from using the digital yuan.
In response, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called on senators to stop transferring politics to sports and creating problems around the NBK’s state digital currency.
