The mascot of digital yuan Photo: VCG

The People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, has rolled out an action plan to ramp up the management and service system of digital yuan and related financial infrastructure construction, which will be implemented on Thursday, or the New Year's Day, according to a senior central bank official.

"The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development mandate that 'we should work faster to boost China's strength in finance' and 'the digital Renminbi should be steadily developed,' which provide guidance for the development and improvement of the digital yuan in the coming months," Lu Lei, deputy governor of the PBC, wrote in an article published in the Financial News on Monday.

A new generation of digital yuan's measurement framework, management system, operational mechanism, and ecosystem is expected to be launched and implemented on January 1, 2026, Lu wrote, noting the move is taken to respond to new demands from the real economy and the financial system for the issuance, circulation and use of digital yuan, to keep pace with the historical evolution of the international monetary system, and effectively enhance the quality, efficiency and service capabilities of the digital yuan.

Currently, the pilot programs for the digital yuan at home and abroad has yielded positive results, with the digital yuan taking the lead among the projects being trialed by a good number of central banks.

China's digital yuan ecosystem has taken preliminary shape, with the cumulative transaction value reaching 16.7 trillion yuan ($2.38 trillion) by the end of November, according to the central bank. A total of 3.48 billion transactions had been processed by the end of November, with 230 million personal wallets launched via the digital yuan app developed by the central bank, data showed.

The multi-Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge (mBridge) - a platform jointly developed by the PBC, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and other central banks to facilitate faster cross-border settlements using their respective currencies - has handled a cumulative total of 4,047 cross-border payment transactions, with a cumulative transaction value equivalent to 387.2 billion yuan, of which digital yuan accounts for about 95.3 percent, according to the PBC.