China’s health care and energy providers will allow patients and customers to pay with the digital yuan, in new breakthroughs for the country’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
According to Chinese media outlet WXRB, outpatients and hospitalized mental health patients can now use CBDC to pay for medical treatment.
Deposits, medicines, and hospitalization fees can be paid through the central bank’s yuan digital app, WXRB explained.
Hospital staff said that the digital yuan’s payments were a “more secure and practical form of intelligent payment.” They said digital yuan payments are faster and that CBDC has helped mental health care facilities “improve the medical experience” for patients.
Employees explained that the CBDC would allow hospitals to move forward on “medical reform” and “digitization”.
In 2021, the country’s first digital yuan portfolios were tested at the Tongren Hospital staff canteen at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
