First, the background of the emergence of digital RMB
(A) The development of digital economy gave birth to digital currency.
The global economic form is developing towards digitalization. According to the statistics of China Information and Communication Research Institute, in 2020, the global digital economy will reach 32.6 trillion US dollars, with a contrarian growth of 3%, and the digital economy of China will reach 5.4 trillion US dollars, with an increase of 9.6%, ranking second in the world. The development of global digital economy has promoted the evolution of payment methods. Electronic payment and mobile payment are becoming more and more popular, and the cash utilization rate is decreasing year by year, which provides a natural foundation for the birth and application of digital currency. Judging from the evolution of the monetary system, CBDC is not only the result of the development of science and technology and economy, but also the need of the digital development of the global economy.
(B) CBDC optimized the management function of the central bank in the field of digital economy
According to the IMF's definition, CBDC is a new currency form, which is digitally issued by the central bank and has legal payment capacity. In essence, CBDC is the direct debt of the central bank, with the highest credit rating, and does not flow into the bank deposit system to participate in currency creation. The working document "digital currency Technology of Retail Central Bank" of the Bank for International Settlements constructs the pyramid selection model of CBDC. They believe that countries can flexibly design in many dimensions such as business structure, account book model, acquisition method and application scope according to the needs of consumers and national conditions.
CBDC can be divided into wholesale type and retail type in application selection, and the wholesale type CBDC is limited to transactions between the central bank and commercial institutions; Retail CBDC, also known as target type, is aimed at the general public. On the technical path, it can be divided into account type and token type. The account version of CBCD refers to the current commercial banks, which open accounts in the central bank for transactions, and the central bank records settlement and transaction information. Token CBDC, also known as Token-type, adopts cryptocurrency paradigm, and the user's identity is not linked to the payment address, and the asset ownership is obtained through the key to protect the user's privacy. The operation structure is divided into single-layer structure and double-layer structure. In the single-tier model, CBDC is directly indebted by the central bank, and directly operates the payment system and provides retail services, which is suitable for small economies with underdeveloped finance. The two-tier model is that the central bank owes money directly, and commercial banks and technology companies provide payment services and financial maintenance.
(C) The global CBDC development is in the ascendant
Since 2020, the world's major economies have taken a positive attitude towards the development and application of CBDC, and more and more central banks have made substantial research results in CBDC. Most developed economies are cautious about CBDC, and their development motives mainly include reducing payment costs, coping with the impact of private currency and tending to develop wholesale CBDC. The main purpose of developing CBDC in developing economies is to maintain and improve their financial systems, and they tend to develop retail CBDC. CBDC, which was first announced to enter the pilot stage, is the Jasper project promoted by the Bank of Canada on 20 16. This paper studies the application feasibility of Jasper in domestic interbank wholesale payment settlement and large payment settlement. From the experimental results, its huge payment system can basically operate effectively, and it can use blockchain to conduct cross-border and cross-currency payment transactions with Ubin, digital currency and Singapore. However, when the transaction volume is extremely large, it is difficult for the system to match effectively, which makes it difficult to determine the final settlement. At present, the European Central Bank has officially launched the Digital Euro project in July 20021,and the Federal Reserve's Digital Dollar project has been put on the agenda, but it has not been officially launched, and the global CBDC development is still in the research and experimental stage.
Second, the necessity of promoting digital RMB in China
(1) Improve the level of RMB trade and help the "Belt and Road" economic cooperation.
China is gradually promoting the internationalization of RMB. According to the composition data of foreign exchange reserve currency officially published by IMF, by the end of the second quarter of 2002119 trillion US dollars, accounting for 2.6 1% of the total foreign exchange reserve of indicative currency, which is a historical high since the publication of this data, and the function of RMB reserve currency appears. However, among the total foreign exchange reserves in designated currencies, the US dollar accounts for 59.23% and the euro accounts for 20.54%. Although the remittance procedures of the US dollar-based SWIFT settlement system are expensive, opaque and inefficient, the United States and Europe are still in an absolute dominant position.
With the continuous development of CBDC settlement system, digital currency's cross-border payment settlement will probably be applied to China's import and export trade and partially replace the existing settlement system. Especially in recent years, China has continuously promoted the high-quality development of the "Belt and Road" and devoted itself to the interconnection of Asia, Europe and the United States. Mainly in Singapore, Kazakhstan, Laos, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and other emerging market countries in Asia and Europe, direct investment, some import and export trade naturally circumvented the settlement system of the United States and Europe. With the improvement of the digital RMB cross-border payment system, it may be the first to be applied in the "Belt and Road" economic activities. Therefore, the development of "retail-wholesale" digital RMB may further expand the application of RMB in international trade and accelerate the internationalization of RMB.
(2) Effectively improve the regulatory capacity of regulatory agencies in the field of mobile payment.
The promotion of digital RMB will further optimize the operation of the central bank in mobile payment. From the perspective of data collection, due to the programmability and transparency of digital currency, it is easier for regulators to control deposits and loans with negative interest rates, and more transparent payment flow data will improve the quality of macroeconomic statistics. From the aspect of improving transaction efficiency, the function of "payment is settlement" of digital RMB omits the roles of card issuer, clearing institution and third-party payment platform in the traditional electronic payment field, which effectively improves transaction speed and realizes real "T+0" settlement. From the perspective of optimizing market segmentation, the central bank acts as a "third-party payment platform" for digital RMB, ensuring that digital RMB has a natural "disconnected direct connection" attribute. With the promotion of digital RMB in the field of mobile payment, the market structure monopolized by existing giants will be broken to some extent. From the perspective of policy transmission, in the implementation of policies such as precise poverty alleviation and precise universal benefits, we can set up channels for the use and acquisition of funds through digital RMB wallets to realize the special and accurate delivery of policy appropriations.
(3) maintaining the stability of the financial system and balancing the paradox between anonymous trading and anti-money laundering.
Virtual encryption digital currency is hidden and anonymous, and it is difficult to track the whereabouts of funds, which leads to capital flight, underground economy and other problems. The separation of the authentication center responsible for managing identity information and the registration center responsible for running account records ensures the anonymity of transactions to some extent. At the same time, its upstream institutions are all central banks. The big data analysis center compares and analyzes suspicious transactions through the data of the certification center and the registration center, which can effectively prevent illegal activities such as money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing.
Third, the design of digital RMB is based on a scientific framework.
Digital RMB, the digital currency of the Bank of China, belongs to legal tender, which is issued and managed by the central bank, and is located at M0.
In the distribution system, digital RMB adopts the dual operation mode of "central bank-commercial bank". The central bank is responsible for the production and issuance of tier 1 digital RMB, which is converted into tier 2 commercial banks according to the reserve of 100%. Commercial banks are open to the public, responsible for the transfer and confirmation of digital RMB, and exchange it based on bank accounts bound by users. Users can open one or more sub-wallets operated by commercial banks under the digital RMB wallet (mom wallet).
In terms of operational architecture, digital RMB adopts the framework of "one currency, two lines and three centers". The "two libraries" include the "distribution library" stored by the central bank on the private cloud and the "bank library" stored by commercial banks on the local and private clouds. "Three centers" refer to certification centers, registration centers and big data analysis centers. Among them, the certification center is responsible for managing the identity information of operating institutions and users; The registration center provides distributed account book service, which is responsible for ownership registration and operation records of production, circulation and inventory processes; Big data centers use technologies such as cloud computing to analyze payment behavior and regulatory indicators.
On the technical path, digital RMB adopts the mode of combining account type and token type to realize limited anonymity and basic universal benefits. The authentication center of the central bank stores the correspondence between the user's address and identity, while the registration center only records the transaction information. On the one hand, because the transaction information does not involve the user's real name identity, a single commercial organization cannot track the complete flow of funds and realize the relative anonymity of the transaction. On the other hand, the central bank has the ability to track the capital chain and can effectively monitor suspicious capital transactions.
In 2020, digital RMB launched a retail pilot test, and a number of test cities, regions and scenarios were successively launched and added. Judging from the scale, promotion methods, number of designated operators, payment methods and user groups, the pilot work of digital RMB is progressing steadily and orderly, and has been applied in many scenarios such as offline merchant payment, online shopping, public transportation, public payment, wage payment and cross-border payment. According to the White Paper on the Development Progress of Digital RMB in China issued by the Central Bank in July, 20021,the main positioning of digital RMB is retail CBDC, and three goals and visions are put forward: First, enrich the cash provided by the Central Bank to the public and help inclusive finance; The second is to support fairness, efficiency and security in the field of retail payment; The third is to explore ways to improve cross-border payment. At present, digital currency Research Institute of People's Bank of China has jointly carried out multilateral CBDC research projects with Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Central Bank of Thailand and Central Bank of UAE. It is predicted that digital RMB will continue to improve the efficiency of domestic retail payment system and reduce the cost of retail payment. At the same time, in the future, it will open up the pilot and promotion in the fields of international trade and cross-border remittance, and gradually change to "retail-wholesale".
Fourthly, the influence of promoting digital RMB on commercial banks.
(A) put forward higher requirements for the digital transformation of commercial banks
The promotion of digital RMB will greatly promote the comprehensive upgrade of IT systems of commercial banks. In the currently known application scenarios, commercial banks must add complete encryption and verification procedures to the core operating system in order to complete the transmission and verification of digital RMB keys. From the offline point of view, ATM machines, intelligent counter machines, merchant collection equipment, etc. Need to update their software and hardware, so that they have the ability to trade digital RMB. It is necessary to complete the overall production, distribution, recycling and system development of digital hard wallet. From the online point of view, a digital RMB module is added to the mobile banking account to realize the opening and recycling functions of soft and hard wallets.
(2) The market share of some payment fields will be re-divided.
Judging from the current pilot situation, the digital wallet of commercial banks will be the main operation mode of digital RMB in the future, which will undertake the functions of payment, collection and transfer of digital RMB. On the one hand, it increases the traffic entrance of mobile payment for commercial banks and reduces the traffic weakness of Alipay and Tenpay. On the other hand, because the third-party payment platform does not participate in the payment process of digital RMB, the handling fee required for "cash withdrawal" of merchants' digital wallets is set by commercial banks themselves. If the "cash withdrawal" fee of digital wallet is lower than that of the current third-party payment platform, some payment markets will tilt towards digital RMB, leading to the re-division of market share in the payment field.
(3) It may have an impact on the profit sharing mode of various businesses between banks and third-party payment platforms.
Because of their special market size and market position, Alipay and Tenpay have strong bargaining power in banking business and account for a high proportion of payment business. If the market share division changes, its bargaining power will be reduced to some extent, and the profit level of banks will be improved.
(D) Seize the new window of enterprise and retail customer flow.
Obtaining traffic has become a big proposition under the background of digital economy. Alipay and Tenpay get traffic based on their online shopping and social networking, while China Merchants Bank gets traffic based on customer service. Commercial banks should do a good job in vertical fields and become platforms rather than access platforms to obtain traffic. The first is to obtain retail customer traffic from deep-rooted application scenarios. In the test of digital RMB, state-owned banks have gradually increased the interaction of digital RMB users. Taking China Construction Bank as an example, its digital wallet actively promotes the use of public transport scenarios with the help of Hainan E-train EMU, and arranges digital payment in the field of public transport. Banks can take the lead in arranging leading enterprises in the industry and occupy the market share of digital payment. The second is to obtain corporate customer traffic from exploring the overall solution of digital payment. All business departments should work together to give priority to the overall solutions such as enterprise digital wallet hosting, digital payroll generation and digital financial management. And fully learn from Alipay's successful experience in building a closed-loop and ecological circle of transactions to achieve effective transformation of corporate customers. (Author/Zhao, Assets and Liabilities Department of CITIC Bank)
(Editor Zhang Mingfu)