China-based food delivery heavyweight Meituan has reportedly become the most recent entity to carry out the integration of central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments for its offerings.

Specifically, Meituan will reportedly now have the ability to connect the digital yuan wallet to their service app, and apply it to a vast array of different day-to-day services, nominally booking hotels, cabs and paying at restaurants. 

The food delivery and daily services app reportedly supports 660 million transacting customers in 2021, and the integration of e-CNY payments would offer assistance to the Beijing authority, in terms of conducting testing of its sovereign digital currency on a wide scope.

Throughout the past months, top-tier tech entities throughout the nation have reportedly taken part in the mass retail testing of e-CNY, nominally WeChat and JD.com. 

China reportedly finalized the design of its CBDC three years ago on its own, and throughout the past two years, the governments have conducted trials for its use in the retail market extensively. 

The CBDC pilot reportedly started out as a travel subsidy supporting authoritative staff, and later expanded to cover millions of individuals and thousands of establishments.

Regardless of details related to an official public release is yet to surface, many reportedly share a belief that the developing sphere of pilots suggests that the authority may be aiming for an introduction of the CBDC during the upcoming winter Olympics starting on Feb. 4.

Zou Lan, director of the PBOC’s financial markets department, reportedly further revealed that the cumulative transactions in e-CNY have hit the figure of 87.57 billion yuan ($13.68 billion).

By the end of October last year, approximately 10 million merchants had activated digital yuan wallets.