China's central bank: e-CNY transactions totaled ~$14B from December 2019 to August 2022, up 14% from ~$12.2B in December 2021, signaling slowing growth
Coco Feng / South China Morning Post :
Context & Ripple Effects
The People's Bank of China has been publishing e-CNY milestones on a steady cadence: its digital yuan pilot processed 3M+ transactions worth ~$162M back in October 2020, reached $5.3B by June 2021, then around 140M wallets and ~$9.7B in transactions by October 2021.
Since then the curve has flattened even as distribution widened — volume hit $12.3B in May 2022 with ~4.6M merchants accepting the digital yuan — and reporting has repeatedly flagged that citizens remain skeptical, preferring Alipay and WeChat Pay. Today's figure of ~$14B through August 2022, up only 14% over eight months, turns those warning signs into a measured slowdown.
First-order effects
- The PBOC's own disclosure confirms e-CNY growth has decelerated sharply: roughly $1.8B of new transaction volume across eight months, versus nearly $7B added during 2021 alone per its earlier milestone reports.
Second-order effects
- Merchant acceptance expanded to ~4.6M stores without a matching pickup in spending, meaning the bottleneck is consumer preference for Alipay and WeChat Pay rather than availability — putting pressure on the central bank to add incentives or use cases that private apps can't match.
Third-order effects
- If wallet counts keep rising while transaction value stalls, the e-CNY risks becoming a mandated rail layered over an entrenched private duopoly rather than a replacement for it — pushing the program's case toward functions like cross-border settlement where Alipay and WeChat Pay don't compete.
The trend: China's digital yuan is moving from rapid pilot-phase accumulation to a grind for everyday relevance against entrenched private payment apps.