Key Takeaways

• Eight banks were approved as e-CNY operators.
• The authorised network has grown to 30 lenders.
• Five of the new operators are city commercial banks.
• Customer services will begin after technical preparations are completed.
• Domestic operator status is separate from cross-border access.

Eight banks join the e-CNY network

The People’s Bank of China has approved Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, China Bohai Bank, Bank of Shanghai, Bank of Hangzhou, Huishang Bank, Bank of Changsha and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank as digital yuan operating institutions.

The digital yuan, or e-CNY, is China’s central bank digital currency: a centrally issued digital form of cash, classified by the PBOC as part of M0, that circulates alongside banknotes and coins rather than replacing bank deposits.

According to the official announcement, the banks will be connected to the central bank’s e-CNY system and will begin offering services after completing their business and technical preparations.

The move expands the network, but it does not mean that every customer of these banks can already use the digital yuan. Each lender must still turn approval into a live service by integrating the system, deciding which products to offer and building acceptance among customers and merchants.

The group includes three national joint-stock commercial banks — Ping An, Hengfeng and China Bohai — and five city commercial banks. Bank of Shanghai and Bank of Hangzhou serve two of China’s major commercial centres, while Huishang Bank, Bank of Changsha and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank extend the network across Anhui, Hunan and Guangxi.

China expands from 10 operators to 30 in 2026

The PBOC began 2026 with 10 authorised operators. In April, it added 12 banks, lifting the total to 22. The latest approvals bring the network to 30.

That earlier round marked a shift away from the original model, which relied on a relatively small group of major banks. The first operator cohort was anchored by the big state-owned lenders — Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank — alongside Postal Savings Bank of China and internet banks such as Tencent-backed WeBank and Ant-backed MYbank. When the 12-bank batch was announced, it included lenders such as China CITIC Bank, China Everbright Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Bank of Ningbo.

This latest expansion goes further into regional banking. That matters because banks do not distribute payment tools in the abstract. They do so through their existing relationships with households, merchants, payroll clients, exporters and smaller companies.

A digital yuan wallet offered by a large state-owned bank can reach millions of customers. A regional lender can add something different: closer access to the businesses and local payment networks already connected to that bank.

Why the regional-bank expansion matters

The new approvals do not guarantee fast adoption. China has spent years testing the e-CNY in retail payments, public services, travel and other everyday uses, but adding banks alone does not make users choose it over existing payment options — above all Alipay and WeChat Pay, the two platforms that dominate Chinese retail payments. Figures cited by the central bank in mid-2024 put cumulative e-CNY transactions at about 7 trillion yuan, a fraction of the value that moves through those mobile-payment rails each year.

It does, however, remove a practical barrier. A company that already uses a regional bank for working capital, supplier payments or payroll is more likely to encounter the e-CNY if that same bank can offer it directly. The same is true for merchants whose day-to-day banking relationships sit outside China’s largest lenders.

Dong Ximiao, chief researcher at Merchants Union Consumer Finance Company Limited, told Xinhua that the newly approved banks could help fill gaps in regional small-business and cross-border-trade services. That should be understood as an assessment of their potential role, not as a confirmed product roadmap.

The PBOC has not announced new trade corridors, payment products or lending services linked to this eight-bank group. What it has done is give the e-CNY access to more institutions that already sit close to regional commerce.

China is also upgrading the data rails behind small-business credit

The payment expansion is part of a wider push to digitise financial infrastructure, but it should not be treated as a single unified system.

China has separately moved to improve how banks assess smaller companies. In April, tax and banking regulators instructed regional authorities and financial institutions to use blockchain and privacy-computing tools in the sharing of business-credit information. The policy focuses on verified data, electronic invoices and credit decisions, not on using the e-CNY as an automatic lending or payment mechanism.

As we explained in our report on the small-business credit framework, the goal is to help lenders assess firms without requiring them to hand over every underlying financial record.

There is no public evidence that the eight newly approved e-CNY banks will connect their digital-yuan services directly to that framework. Any such claim would go beyond the available information.

Still, the two policies point in the same broad direction. China is expanding a central-bank digital payment network while also improving the data systems banks use to serve businesses. One concerns how money moves; the other concerns how lenders verify the firms moving it.

Domestic operators are not the same as cross-border routes

The expansion inside China should also be kept separate from the country’s international e-CNY plans.

In June, the e-CNY International Operation Center signed direct-participant agreements with 26 financial institutions for the Cross-border e-CNY Transfer Services platform, known as CBETS. The system is designed to support 24-hour payment links with foreign central banks and overseas financial institutions. Reuters reported that the platform is intended to support lower-cost cross-border payments and wider international use of the yuan.

China’s cross-border CBDC work is not limited to CBETS. The PBOC’s digital-currency institute also takes part in Project mBridge, a multi-central-bank cross-border CBDC trial with the monetary authorities of Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The two networks may overlap over time, but they are not the same thing. Approval to operate the e-CNY inside China does not automatically place a bank on CBETS or give it access to every international settlement route.

That distinction is important for the latest announcement. The immediate development is domestic: more banks can prepare to distribute and support the digital yuan inside China. Any future cross-border role would need to be announced separately.

Usage, not approvals, is the next test

The PBOC has tripled the number of authorised e-CNY operators since the start of the year, giving the digital yuan a much wider banking base, especially beyond China’s largest national lenders.

The next test is whether those banks turn approval into services that customers actually use. The most important updates will be launch dates, merchant partnerships, business-payment products and evidence that the e-CNY is becoming part of regular local commercial activity.

For crypto markets, this is not a step toward public crypto adoption. It is China building a bank-distributed, centrally issued digital money system on its own terms. The significance lies in the infrastructure: the e-CNY is gaining more channels into the economy, one regional lender at a time.