New digital renminbi action plan to take effect Jan. 1, 2026

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has unveiled a comprehensive action plan for the next-generation digital renminbi (digital RMB), announcing that a new measurement framework, management system, operating mechanism and ecosystem will formally take effect Jan. 1, 2026.

According to the plan, the future digital RMB will be a digital means of payment and circulation issued and circulated within the financial system. It will be account-based, compatible with distributed ledger technology features, and carry the legal and supervisory backing of the central bank while taking on the liability attributes of commercial banks. The PBOC said the currency will serve as a unit of account, a store of value and a vehicle for cross-border payments.

A prominent change under the new regime is the formal integration of bank-issued digital RMB into the reserve requirement framework: digital-RMB balances held by banking institutions will be counted into the deposit reserve base. Non-bank payment institutions participating in digital RMB operations will be required to maintain 100% digital-RMB margins. Wallet balances will be classified into corresponding monetary layers according to liquidity characteristics.

The PBOC defined customer holdings of digital RMB in commercial bank wallets as account-based commercial bank liabilities. The central bank said this marks a transition from the cash-like “1.0” version of digital currency toward a deposit-money “2.0” model, where bank accounts remain the basic payment unit.

Under the PBOC’s Digital Currency Research Institute, a Digital RMB Operations Management Center and a Digital RMB International Operations Center will be responsible respectively for the construction, operation and protection of the central-bank-side digital RMB system and the cross-border business system.