Li Lihui, the former president of Bank of China, believes that the advantages of digital renminbi over other payment tools are administrative status and custody transaction technology, but whether it can replace Alipay and WeChat remains to be seen.
Original title: “Li Lihui: Digital RMB will not replace WeChat and Alipay in at least ten years”
Author: Digital Legal Currency Research Society
On November 25th, Li Lihui, the leader of the Blockchain Working Group of the China Internet Finance Association and the former President of the Bank of China, stated at the “2021 Caijing” Annual Conference that at least in the next ten years, Alipay, WeChat Pay and bank cards , Will still be the main payment tool.
In the discussion of “Digital Currency: From Concept to Reality”, he expressed his views on legal digital currency.
Li Lihui believes that digital renminbi has two advantages compared with some of our other payment tools: the first is the advantage of administrative authority; second, it has the technical advantage of custodial transactions. It can replace the cash in circulation. Will speed up the process of de-cashing.
“But we have a question to discuss. Can it replace Alipay, WeChat Pay, and bank cards as the main electronic payment tool? I think it remains to be seen.”
Li Lihui said that in our country, WeChat Pay and Alipay have built a mobile payment and life service platform with trust and connection as the link because of digital technology, breaking through the traditional model. Both of these two kinds of monthly activities exceed 700 to 800 million. , Its transaction amount and number of transactions rank first and second in the global mobile payment platform.
“I predict that for at least the next ten years, Alipay, WeChat Pay and bank cards will still be the main payment tools. And whether digital RMB can eventually replace WeChat Pay and Alipay as the main payment tools, or even cross-border overflow, and develop into For a global digital currency, I think it will be a process of market decision.” Li Lihui said.
Li Lihui believes that there are several factors that affect market choices, whether it is more reliable to operate, whether it is more convenient to use, whether the circulation cost is lower, and whether it can form an economic scale with commercial value.
According to a survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements, 80% of central banks have initiated digital currency research and development. Li Lihui introduced that legal digital currency may have the greatest benefits in three aspects: first, it can save costs, prevent counterfeit currency, and can strengthen the public inclusive characteristics of the payment system; second, it can grasp structured currency circulation data in real time , Which can precisely regulate the total amount of money supply; third, the information of capital flow can be observed in real time and can be tracked throughout the process. It can strengthen the control of anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, anti-tax evasion, etc.
However, Li Lihui also feels that fiat digital currencies may have two main potential problems. The first problem is that the central bank can directly absorb public deposits, which may weaken the initial credit capacity of commercial banks and weaken their profitability; second If payment difficulties occur to individual banks, it may easily cause a run on digital currency deposits that are difficult to control, and it is more likely to trigger systemic financial risks.
“Our country has the largest population in the world, and the scale of our payment market is also the largest in the world. When we issue Chinese legal digital currency in such a market, we must ensure the reliability and reliability of digital currency tools in such a highly concurrent market. Security.” Li Lihui said.
In Li Lihui’s view, China’s legal digital currency or digital renminbi probably has several main characteristics:
Feature 1: Adopt an indirect issuance model to maintain a two-tier operation and release system. Whether it is a large bank or a small bank, it is just a channel for issuance.
Feature 2: It is also particularly important to adopt a central bank management model to ensure the reliability of the monetary policy transmission mechanism and ensure the efficiency of monetary regulation.
Feature 3: Keep technology neutral. “Because we have a group of authoritative experts who believe that after research, the existing blockchain technology cannot meet the high-concurrency demand of the retail level of the super-large market, and the underlying architecture of our current digital RMB does not rely on a single blockchain technology.” Li Lihui said.
Feature 4: Adopt a loosely coupled account and digital wallet.
“WeChat Pay and Alipay are all accounts that are tightly coupled to bank accounts. The digital wallet of legal digital currency does not need to be bound to bank accounts. It can also achieve end-to-end value transfer without bank accounts, reducing the transaction link to financial intermediaries. Rely on, and can realize anonymous payment, of course it is controllable anonymous payment. The important thing is that foreigners who do not open an account in the Bank of China can also get a digital RMB wallet to realize convenient payment.” Li Lihui said.
At present, my country’s legal digital currency is still in the early stage of technical verification, and at least it has to pass a successful mid-term test before it can be widely promoted.
Source link: mp.weixin.qq.com
