Meituan Photo: CFP

China's online delivery giant Meituan started distributing digital yuan "red packets" on Thursday, aiming to promote low-carbon travel, in another major push for China's digital currency that is on a rapid expansion trend across the economy.

Residents in Shanghai now can receive digital yuan "red packets" worth 10 yuan ($1.55) starting from Thursday to December 31, after searching the keyword on the Meituan app and completing the registration. The money can be used to pay for the platform's bike-sharing service, Chinese financial news site cnstock.com reported on Thursday. 

Users have chances to obtain more digital yuan "red packets," if they continue to use Meituan's services, which are aimed at promoting low-carbon travel. 

The trail was jointly launched by Meituan and Agricultural Bank of China, China Postal Savings Bank, China Construction Bank for residents in nine cities and regions, including Beijing, Shanghai, the Xiongan New Area, and other cities across the country that have digital yuan pilot programs. Residents living in those cities and regions are eligible to receive "red packets" as a means of promoting low-carbon travel. 

"Our vision is to use low-carbon travel as a breakthrough and take advantage of the unique technology of digital yuan to incorporate the concept of the nation's carbon neutrality goal to users' daily life, so that users can experience the convenience of consuming with digital yuan, while enhancing their awareness of and participation in carbon emission reduction," the cnstock.com reported, citing a senior staff member at Meituan. 

"As the digital yuan testing continues to deepen, Meituan will open up the platform for more consumption settings, assist in exploring the application and technical capabilities of the digital yuan, and use Meituan as the connection point to let users become familiar with and use the digital yuan in their daily consumption," said the staff member. 

China has been accelerating and deepening the testing of the digital yuan, exploring with more application opportunities. 

China's central bank-backed digital yuan has been used by the Dalian Commodity Exchange to pay for storage fees in a local warehouse on August 24, marking the first time that the sovereign digital currency has been applied in the futures market. 

Moreover, passengers in Beijing now can use the digital yuan to buy tickets, all-purpose cards and top up their all-purpose cards across the city's subway network from August .

Global Times