The People's Bank of China and eight other departments announced plans to promote the cross-border application of the digital yuan and explore new payment cooperation scenarios with Singapore and othe

PANews reported on December 24 that eight departments, including the People's Bank of China, issued the "Opinions on Financial Support for Accelerating the Construction of the Western Land-Sea New Corridor." The Opinions propose exploring international cooperation in digital finance. It supports provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) along the corridor to participate in multilateral central bank digital currency bridge projects, promoting the use of central bank digital currencies in cross-border payments with Thailand, Hong Kong, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. It also supports exploring and promoting pilot projects for cross-border payments of digital RMB between the mainland and Singapore. Furthermore, it supports eligible provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) along the corridor to build cross-border e-commerce digital service platforms, connecting with cross-border e-commerce and trade digitization platform companies in countries such as Singapore to enhance cross-border e-commerce service capabilities.

The section on expanding the cross-border use of the RMB mentions: strengthening bilateral monetary cooperation with Southeast Asian and Central Asian countries to create supporting conditions for the cross-border use of the RMB; further promoting the pilot program for facilitating RMB settlement in trade and investment at a higher level, supporting foreign trade enterprises to use RMB for settlement more often; supporting ASEAN investors to invest in RMB and reinvest domestically; encouraging RMB pricing and settlement for bulk commodity transactions; supporting the cross-border transfer of RMB cash by banking financial institutions; supporting banks to use RMB for pricing and settlement when conducting cross-border financing, cross-border guarantees, and cross-border asset transfers; supporting eligible provincial (autonomous region, municipality) legal person banks along the Belt and Road to join the RMB cross-border payment system; leveraging the advantages of digital RMB such as payment-settlement, low cost, and programmability, researching the use of digital RMB smart contracts to create innovative solutions, and exploring the feasibility of expanding the application of digital RMB in scenarios such as channel payment settlement, financing, and tax refunds; and studying the expansion of the geographical scope of digital RMB cross-border application, utilizing bilateral and multilateral cross-border business models to reduce costs and increase efficiency in channel cross-border payments.