More than 100,000 consumers used China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) to make some 240,000 purchases on China’s top e-commerce platform JD.com on the annual shopping festival Double 11 [11.11], according to the platform’s report. Yet that is likely only a fraction of total Nov. 11 digital sales.
Fast facts
- Double11 refers to a Chinese online sales day on Nov. 11 each year, something akin to the Chinese version of Black Friday. China’s digital yuan was used for the first time in the Double 11 shopping festival on JD.com, which has issued e-CNY red packets to users in the 12 e-currency pilot cities before and during the shopping festival, to test out and to promote the adoption rate of e-currency. JD.com is the first Chinese e-commerce platform that announced it is accepting e-CNY.
- However, the amount of e-CNY transactions during the festival may only account for a tiny portion of its whole transaction volume. JD’s total sales during the festival reached 349.1 billion yuan (approximately US$54.66 billion).
- According to data disclosed by JD.com, since the digital yuan payment was first allowed last December, nearly 700,000 users have used the currency to create more than 1.8 million transactions, with a cumulative consumption amount of nearly 150 million yuan (US$28.20 million).
- E-commerce platform sales volume continues to hit new records. JD.com broke the last-year record with a 28% growth in the total sales volume; meanwhile, Tmall, the e-commerce platform under the brand of Alibaba, reached 8% higher than last year’s turnover of total sales volume 540.3 billion yuan.
- However, China’s e-commerce giants have remained low profile, without broadcasting the latest dealing volume every hour on Nov. 11, as in the previous years.