China’s Belt and Road initiative, the project aimed at improving regional co-operation through better connectivity, is one of the most ambitious infrastructure plans globally. While the initiative is purely physical and involves improving road connectivity, the country’s digital infrastructure plans for cross border trade could change the face of international payments in the commercial space. This is because the initiative connects stakeholders from around 150 countries.

China’s logistics hubs just began promoting the digital Yuan (e-CNY) for usage in cross border trade, as per a report in the South China Morning Post. This could be huge as the Belt and Road initiative was in 2022 already covering 30% of the country’s import export global trade. Hence, this could be seen as potentially largest digital currency usage project so far globally. Earlier, CoinGape reported that India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), began implementing the digital rupee pilot for settlement of secondary market transactions.

(By Anvesh Reddy)