China presses McDonald’s, Nike and Visa to accept digital yuan payments before Beijing Winter Olympics

China has told McDonald’s to expand a digital renminbi payments system at restaurants across the country before the Beijing Winter Olympics, as the country prepares to launch the world’s first major e-currency, according to Financial Times.

Three people familiar with the situation said China was pushing some US companies to install systems to allow consumers to pay for their products in digital renminbi by the opening of the Beijing Games in February.

The e-renminbi is legal tender issued by the Chinese central bank that allows people to make digital transactions through a mobile phone app. The People’s Bank of China says the currency — also known as e-CNY — will coexist with cash. Dozens of other countries are considering central bank digital currencies.

As part of a pilot scheme, McDonald’s is allowing consumers to use digital renminbi wallets at 270 locations in Shanghai. But the Chinese government wants the hamburger chain to expand the system more widely across China. McDonald’s declined to say whether it was facing pressure.

One person familiar with the situation said Visa, a top Olympics sponsor, and Nike, a US team sponsor, were also facing pressure. Visa and Nike both declined to comment.

Darrell Duffie, co-head of a project on the e-renminbi run by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said China would have a slower rollout than planned at the Olympics due to the pandemic. He said it was not singling out US companies, but trying to make the e-currency broad-based.

“I always assumed large US firms would be put under pressure to provide weight to the digital renminbi, because most large retailers will be put under pressure and American firms won’t be exempted,” Duffie said.

But the inclusion of iconic US brands would help China use the Games to bolster its campaign to launch the e-renminbi. “

The Winter Olympics is one of the testing grounds for the digital yuan, so I . . . imagine that all sorts of retailers, including domestic and foreign companies, will be required by the government to participate,” said Bao Linghao of Trivium, a consultancy.

Yaya Fanusie, a former CIA analyst, said the digital renminbi could give China scope to harm foreign companies. Pointing to efforts earlier this year to punish H&M and Nike over comments about forced labour, he said the Chinese government could block consumers from using the digital renminbi at the stores of foreign companies that had fallen foul of Beijing.