A former official at the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which is China’s central bank, has expressed his dissatisfaction that China’s digital yuan is not used very often.

According to a report published on Dec. 28 by Caixin, Xie Ping, a former PBOC research director who is now a finance professor at Tsinghua University, made public comments critical of China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in a recent University conference. Xie Ping’s comments were made public during the conference.

Xie noted that the total value of all transactions made with the digital yuan had just surpassed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after the currency’s debut. “The results are not what I would have expected,” she said, adding that “use has been minimal and very inactive.” Despite the government’s rapid extension of testing and the introduction of additional wallet features in an effort to attract users, the People’s Bank of China said in January that only 261 million people have set up an e-wallet. CNY.

According to research published by China UnionPay in 2021, this number is much lower than the estimated 903.6 million people who use mobile payments in China.

The former central bank official claimed that the use case for e-CNY “needs to change” from its current use as a substitute for cash and should be opened up to other uses such as the ability to pay for financial products or connected to more payment platforms for increase adoption.

He made the comparison by stating: “He compared the digital yuan to other third-party payment systems in the nation, such as WeChat Pay, Alipay, and QQ Wallet, which allow investment, lending, or borrowing.

Although there are some third-party financial apps that support e-CNY, they are not widely used because, as Xie said, “people are used to” using the original service and “switching is hard.”

This level of criticism of the Chinese government’s efforts by former officials is quite unusual and suggests that the nation may be having significant difficulty gaining momentum on its CBDC project.

The administration has moved quickly to extend e-CNY trails to a total of four additional cities, the most recent of which was in December.

It was decided to add new features to the e-CNY wallet app in the hope of attracting users in time for the Chinese New Year. One of these new features is the ability to send digital versions of traditional red packets or red envelopes (hongbao) that contain money. This is a common custom that is observed during celebrations.