(Yicai) Oct. 28 -- China’s central bank is creating a dual-center system for managing the digital yuan, setting up a new hub in Beijing to handle core infrastructure, operation, and maintenance, which will work alongside the Shanghai center that opened last month and focuses on cross-border use and blockchain infrastructure.

The Beijing center will be responsible for building, running, and maintaining the digital yuan system, promoting its wider deployment, and contributing to the capital city’s development as China’s national financial management center, People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng said yesterday at the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum.

The Shanghai center focuses on cross-border and blockchain infrastructure for the e-yuan. Its mandate is to promote connectivity between domestic and foreign financial systems, support e-yuan’s global operation, foster related financial market business, and underpin digital finance innovation.

The new hub will build and operate the digital currency’s core infrastructure, the PBOC Digital Currency Research Institute, which runs the two centers, told Yicai. It will also coordinate market institutions to jointly build an open, inclusive, safe, and efficient e-yuan ecosystem, advance all aspects of digital yuan business, and serve innovation in the monetary and payment systems, it added.

The digital yuan, a legal digital currency issued and regulated by the PBOC, has steadily evolved into a functioning ecosystem over the past few years. By the end of last month, pilot regions had recorded CNY14.2 trillion (USD2 trillion) in transactions across 3.32 billion payments, with more than 225 million personal wallets opened through the official digital yuan app.

Pan also said that the PBOC will continue optimizing the e-yuan’s management system, study and refine its place within monetary aggregates, and encourage more commercial banks to serve as operational institutions for digital yuan business.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev