The People's Bank of China (PBOC) has committed to "steadily developing" the digital yuan over the next five years, listing the e-CNY among its core priorities in a newly published reform blueprint.

The central bank's "15th Five-Year" reform and development plan, covering the 2026–2030 period, was accompanied by nine separate action plans covering specific policy areas and published on the PBOC website. The documents address monetary policy, macroprudential supervision, financing for the real economy, and further opening of China's financial system.

Digital Yuan Positioned as Financial Infrastructure Priority

The digital yuan is addressed under the plan's fifth priority area, which covers financial infrastructure and central bank services. The PBOC stated it intends to improve payment systems, support the credit-reporting industry, and strengthen anti-money-laundering regulations.

A separate section focused on internationalization outlines commitments to expand the renminbi's use in trade and investment, build out a cross-border payment network, and develop offshore RMB markets. The plan also calls for strengthening Shanghai's role as an international financial center and reinforcing Hong Kong's position in global finance.

The central bank began laying groundwork for the 15th Five-Year plan at the start of 2026, when it established a framework allowing commercial banks to pay interest on client e-CNY balances.

The PBOC first launched research on the e-CNY project in 2014 under the label DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment), making China one of the earliest major economies to begin CBDC development. The digital yuan was officially launched in April 2022, with early adoption encouraged through airdrops in pilot cities. While the e-CNY has since been rolled out across numerous cities and integrated into government and retail payment flows, overall transaction volumes have remained modest relative to China's dominant mobile payment platforms, Alipay and WeChat Pay.

At the 2026 National People's Congress, deputy Fu Xiguo proposed revising the PBOC's governing law — last updated in 2003 — on the grounds that it does not yet define the e-CNY as legal tender, as reported by Cryptopolitan. A formal legal tender designation would clarify the currency's status in disputes and contracts, a step some observers see as a prerequisite for broader institutional adoption.

Cross-Border Adoption Expands

Guangdong province has released a draft of its own five-year plan, open for public comment until September 5. The proposal calls for larger cross-border e-CNY payment trials and expanded use cases for the currency.

This push follows China's first cross-border digital yuan payment with Singapore, in which ICBC branches settled close to 10 million yuan in shipping fees through the upgraded CBETS platform. That system onboarded its first 26 financial institutions in June.

Project mBridge, a multi-central-bank settlement platform built on distributed ledger technology whose members include mainland China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, has also seen significant activity. Industrial Bank recently extended mBridge services to Macau and used the platform to transfer 500 million yuan ($74 million) for an equity deal. According to the South China Morning Post, the platform's corporate client count for the service jumped 176% year on year in the first half of 2026.

Bank of China's Fujian branch separately processed more than HK$10 billion ($1.28 billion) through mBridge, in what it described as the platform's largest single transfer to date. The growth in mBridge usage comes as central banks worldwide explore alternatives to conventional correspondent-banking corridors, which have long been criticized for cost and settlement-speed inefficiencies.