Huawei’s Newest Smartphone Will Come With Digital Yuan Wallet
- The new Mate 40 line of smartphones will include an integrated hardware wallet, which will support China’s CBDC.
- The phones will come with “hardware-level security, controllable anonymous protection, and dual offline transactions”.
People walk past a Huawei brand store in Kiev, Ukraine, on 20 October 2018. Shutterstock
Huawei’s upcoming Mate 40 line of smartphones will come with a built-in wallet that supports China’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the firm said on its Weibo channel on 30 October.
According to the announcement, Mate 40 will be the first smartphones to include an integrated hardware wallet for China’s digital yuan, which could indicate that China is closer to releasing its CBDC than we thought. The phones will come with “hardware-level security, controllable anonymous protection, and dual offline transactions”, which would allow its users to make transactions by simply touching their devices, even if there is no internet connection.
The firm’s post reads:
“Huawei Mate 40 series is the first smartphone that supports digital RMB hardware wallet, hardware-level security, controllable anonymity protection, dual offline transactions, bringing a new safe and convenient payment experience.”
Announced in late October, the Mate 40 series will be the latest flagship smartphones released by Huawei, which will use the 5nm chip technology to significantly increase the phone’s potential power. There is still no release date for this line of phones, and it is also unclear if the phones produced for other regions will sport the CBDC wallet.
China is getting closer and closer to releasing its Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DC/EP) system. Earlier this month, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) completed its most recent trial of the digital yuan, which was conducted in the city of Shenzhen. In order to promote its CBDC project, the bank gave away almost 10 million digital yuan to around 50,000 lottery winners, who completed a total of 62,788 transactions. The winners in the giveaway could spend their rewards in over 3,000 merchants in Shenzhen’s Luohu District.
In a separate announcement, the PBoC claimed that its digital yuan has already been used in over 3 million transactions, with a total value of 1.1 billion RMB (around $162 million). The bank had allegedly opened 113,300 personal digital wallets, and almost 9,000 corporate wallets, during its digital yuan trials.
- The head of China’s central bank digital currency institute said the e-CNY has undergone a major upgrade, and should be made available as an option in all retail scenarios.
- The PBOC official noted that platforms can integrate the CBDC in the short term using QR codes, and focus on upgrading their payment tools in the long run.
Office building of the People’s Bank of China. Flickr
- China’s CBDC has been in development for years now, and has been used in numerous tests around the country since 2020.
- In order to use the CBDC for payments users will first need to verify their identity using the digital yuan wallet app.
- An executive of the People’s Bank of China has claimed that the country’s CBDC has already been used in over $9.7 billion worth of transactions.
- He further stated that 1.5 million merchants were ready to accept payments from the 140 million individual and 10 million corporate e-CNY wallets in the country.