The People Bank of China (PBoC) has accelerated its efforts to promote financial technologies such as blockchain by opening a new research center in Nanjing.
The bank’s blockchain front, known as Digital Currency Research Lab, enters the capital city of Eastern Jiangsu Province with a promise to develop finance technologies in partnership with the municipal government. The tools designed in the new facility would power several Jiangsu’s financial and academic institutions, including PBoC’s Jiangsu branch, the Bank of Jiangsu and the University of Nanjing, in their respective FinTech pilot projects.
A local news outlet reported that PBoC is looking to create an economic link between various government entities from politics, manufacturing, research and development, education and whatnot. The Nanjing center would merely allow the Chinese central bank to integrate the government departments, high-tech parks, financial institutions, universities, research institutes, and research and development enterprises into one immutable thread of data sharing – which could mean an extensive deployment of the blockchain technology.
The R&D park would also interest researchers from data, mobile, internet and – most importantly – the Artificial Intelligence sector. The goal would be to create viable counterpoints between different technologies for the benefit of PBoC-led government agencies.
Nanjing Fintech Center to Test China’s Digital Currency
China was among the first countries to refute Bitcoin and yet rest its national digital currency plans on the foundation of Bitcoin’s underlying technology. The Nanjing FinTech center is also going to push the PBoC’s agenda by testing the digital Yuan prototype before its potential deployment across the nation. The Digital Currency Research Lab has already established a wholly owned branch in the southern city of Shenzen – called Shenzhen Fintech Limited – with a kickstart capital of around $300,000.
Like Nanjing, the Schenzen R&D lab has also partnered with its municipal government with an aim to deploy its blockchain tools across the local financial and academy institutions. The lab has filed more than 40 patents related to the development of centralized digital currency already, to project China as a global leader in blockchain development. As per the local media reports, most of these patents focus on loans interest rate management, exchanges, and wallet systems.
Nanjing, though behind Schenzen, could only further the research by accelerating the systematic preparation for the Chinese digital currency.
PBoC, however, does not have any official launch date of their digital Yuan.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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