China is ramping up its push to get more people to use the country’sdigital currency, with 10 of the country’s largest banks announcing they will pay interest to holders of the digital yuan.

The list includes Tencent’s neobank WeBank and Mybank, Alipay’s banking subsidiary.

The banks say they will pay holders of China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, every quarter, making their first payouts on March 20, the Chinese news outlet Sina Finance reported.

The central bank first revealed details about its “upgraded” CBDC late last year.

The rollout of the digital yuan has faced some obstacles.

The central bank’s digital yuan pilot began in April 2020, but the CBDC has struggled to gain traction compared to domestic fintech solutions.

It is against this backdrop that the banks have decided to pay their customers an initial annual interest rate of 0.05%, with investors showing considerable recent interest in the various firms working on the digital yuan.

New ID checks

To claim interest payments, holders must complete a new, stricter identity verification process.

This will ensure banks comply with anti-money laundering requirements and make it easier to verify ownership, the central bank said.

For unauthenticated wallets, banks will hold payments until users complete this process.

The list of banks also includes most of the country’s most prominent traditional financial players: the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; the Agricultural Bank of China; the Bank of China; the China Construction Bank; the Bank of Communications; the Postal Savings Bank; the China Merchants Bank; and the Industrial Bank.

The banks, rather than the central bank, will issue the interest payments.

“What remains unchanged about the project is that it is led by the central bank, which provides technical support and supervision,” Guan Tao, chief economist at Bank of China International Securities, told Sina Finance.

“But what has changed about the digital yuan is that it has shifted from a central bank liability to a commercial bank liability.”

The country’s move to allow its traditional banking community to pay interest to its CBDC holders also runs counter to current stablecoin rules in the US.

The Genius Act, landmark stablecoin legislation passed in July 2025, prevents stablecoin issuers from issuing holders interest or yield on their stablecoins.

Across the world, 135 countries are at different stages of rolling out their own CBDCs, according to the Atlantic Council’s tracker.

Investment options

Unnamed financial industry experts told Sina Finance that commercial banks and the central bank are working on pilots that will let investors use the digital yuan to purchase traditional financial assets, such as securities and bonds.

One expert said the People’s Bank of China now officially views the digital yuan as a form of currency on a par with cash, which will eventually enable investors to use the CBDC to buy “all traditional wealth management products.”

Only so-called “anonymous wallets,” which are typically used by people who wish to make small, undisclosed donations, will be unable to accrue interest, Sina Finance explained.

Last month, the central bank said a total of 3.48 billion CBDC transactions have been processed to date.

It says 230 million people have opened personal wallets, in addition to almost 19 million corporate wallets.