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"Ding! You have a digital RMB salary to be collected." After the comprehensive rollout of consumption scenarios such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, the digital RMB pilot is now further deepening in the wage payment scenario. On August 8, a Beijing Business Daily reporter found that many places such as Beijing, Guangdong, Chongqing, Hainan, Jiangsu, Hebei, and Sichuan have taken action. Not only employees of enterprises and institutions have received "digital wages", but also migrant workers and other groups have been implemented, solving the latter's many pain points such as wage arrears and wage storage.

Enterprises and institutions receive "digital wages"

Another step forward: Digital RMB wage payment has been implemented in another region. On August 8, according to Hebei Daily, the Yutian County Finance Bureau of Tangshan City recently implemented digital RMB wage payment for the first time, and 9,791 staff members of government agencies and institutions in the county received "digital wages."

According to reports, since Yutian County was designated as a pilot county for digital RMB wage payment by Tangshan City in May this year, it has actively promoted the digital RMB wage payment work, and through the issuance of relevant guiding documents and the production of "digital currency wallet registration process" promotional materials, it has built a digital RMB application ecosystem and guided employees to register digital currency wallets.

The construction of digital RMB salary payment scenarios for fiscal budget units is an important part of the digital RMB pilot work. It is worth mentioning that it is not just Hebei. Beijing Business Daily reporters found that as of now, at least Beijing, Guangdong, Chongqing, Hainan, Jiangsu, Sichuan and other places have realized digital RMB salary payment.

For example, just recently, the Beijing Branch of the People's Bank of China disclosed that it has comprehensively promoted the full-scenario pilot application of the digital RMB, and has implemented nearly 686,000 online and offline scenarios. This year, it will achieve full coverage of digital RMB tax and fee payment scenarios, and some regions will pay wages to employees of enterprises and institutions in the form of digital RMB.

In addition, in Danzhou City, Hainan Province, digital RMB has been successfully used to pay wages to the city's public resource trading service center. According to reports, cadres and employees who receive digital RMB wages can directly use digital RMB for consumption at merchants with digital RMB payment functions online or offline, and experience the convenience and security brought by digital currency transactions.

The pilot projects in many places reflect the huge potential of digital RMB in the wage payment scenario. In the view of Su Xiaorui, a senior researcher at Suxi Zhiyan, digital RMB has the characteristics of "payment is settlement", which can improve the efficiency of payment and settlement; in addition, the characteristics of digital RMB such as "traceability" and "immutability" can realize the safe and controllable flow of funds in payment and transactions, and effectively ensure the safety of payment funds; in addition, digital RMB is more cost-effective than traditional payment, which can effectively reduce costs and increase efficiency for traditional payment.

"What is particularly important is that the payment of wages in public institutions is directly linked to fiscal revenue and expenditure and goes directly to the national treasury. Once the digital RMB is linked to government functions related to income distribution, the efficient promotion of the digital RMB will be a qualitative breakthrough," Shen Xiayi, assistant director of the Lianshuo Securities Research Institute, further added.

Solve the pain points of migrant workers such as wage arrears and storage

The digital RMB is a legal currency in digital form issued by the People's Bank of China, operated by designated operating institutions and exchanged to the public. It is equivalent to paper money and coins. It not only has the characteristics of physical RMB payment and settlement, but also realizes the characteristics of electronic payment such as low cost, high efficiency, strong portability, and difficulty in counterfeiting. It also has the advantages of no handling fees, real-time account arrival, smart contracts, offline payment, and high versatility.

It is worth mentioning that with the gradual advancement of the digital RMB pilot, the digital RMB is not limited to the scene of wage payment on behalf of enterprises and institutions. Beijing Business Daily reporters noticed that according to the Chongqing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, the latter is also exploring a new model to prevent wage arrears at the source and pilot the work of paying migrant workers' wages with digital RMB. At present, this work has been successfully implemented in Liangping District.

Just on June 28, Liangping District used digital RMB to pay more than 60,000 yuan in wages to the first batch of 13 migrant workers. In this way, the wages are directly paid to the migrant workers' digital wallets, which can effectively avoid the risk of wages being intercepted by labor companies or team leaders.

Previously, the issue of wage arrears for migrant workers has attracted much attention and is also a difficult point for supervision and governance at all levels of government. Chongqing Human Resources and Social Security said that in 2023, the city investigated and dealt with 1,334 cases of wage arrears, and recovered 201 million yuan in wages for 14,800 workers. Using digital RMB, wages can be directly transferred from the account of the general contractor to the personal wallet of migrant workers, effectively avoiding the problems of labor subcontracting units and "contractors" withholding wage cards and misappropriating labor costs, and ensuring that special account funds are used for special purposes and supervised in real time. At the same time, it also eliminates the impact of new migrant workers entering the site without applying for bank cards, losing bank cards, and inter-bank transfers on the payment of wages, ensuring that wages are paid "in seconds" to the digital RMB wallets of migrant workers.

In this regard, Shen Xiayi told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the digital RMB pays wages to migrant workers and other groups, which not only avoids the possibility of some bad construction contracting units defaulting on migrant workers' wages, but also avoids the occurrence of situations such as migrant workers' wages being difficult to preserve, failure to apply for designated wage payment bank cards, and bank card loss. This method of wage payment solves the pain points of migrant workers' wage arrears and migrant workers' wage storage, and may continue to promote the capital flow of the entire business chain of construction units in the future, thereby expanding widely in related payment fields.

"Actively exploring new models to prevent wage arrears at the source is based on the application of digital RMB smart contracts, which can ensure that wages are paid to workers' accounts on time and smoothly, and supervise employers to fulfill their contracts," Su Xiaorui pointed out that smart contract technology is a conditional transaction payment that can meet the needs of both parties to the transaction to execute contracts efficiently and safely through the setting of certain conditions. Previously, some places had started to build a public smart contract platform based on digital RMB, which not only promoted the orderly progress of the transaction process and improved the efficiency of contract performance, but also could fairly execute contracts on both parties to the transaction from the perspective of an external third party, thereby ensuring the safety of transaction funds.

Digital currency salary payment is the general trend

"Just enter the employee's name and mobile phone number to pay wages to the employee's personal wallet." "Employees can receive wages without going to a bank branch, and can also participate in various red envelope and discount activities." As an operating institution, the bank is also constantly promoting the pilot program of digital RMB wage payment.

According to the bank's introduction, it can not only pay salaries, subsidies, and expense reimbursements on behalf of employees, but also pay pensions, military/veteran allowances, operating funds, investment management, insurance and other types of funds on behalf of employees.

In the industry's view, digital RMB is the general trend for wage payment. As Shen Xiayi expected, it will first be implemented in areas where wage payment is difficult and inefficient. Secondly, digital RMB will be issued in financial revenue and expenditure in budget units that pay wages. Finally, digital RMB will be widely used in areas such as budget unit fund settlement, employee wage payment, and people's consumer expenditure, thereby providing institutional guarantees and technical support for digital RMB to promote efficient, safe, and stable payment and settlement reforms.

Su Xiaorui also said that the integration of smart contract technology in the field of digital RMB has a certain technical and scenario foundation, and its application method is also the key trend of the future development of digital RMB. Digital RMB salary payment will be the general trend in the future. She suggested that market institutions with conditions and technology can take the initiative to study and actively join in, explore the combination of programmable and traceable characteristics of digital currency with smart contracts, and implement them in performance, prepayment and other businesses, so as to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of vulnerable workers and consumers.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Liu Sihong