E-commerce giant JD.com accepts China's digital currency for world's biggest shopping event

• JD.com is accepting e-CNY for payment on its e-commerce platform during the Singles Day promotional period.
• More than 100,000 people have used e-CNY on the company's app during the promo period so far, JD said.

JD.com is allowing customers to make payments with China's digital currency for Singles Day - the biggest shopping event in the world.

The e-commerce giant said in December it would begin accepting the digital yuan. But this is the first Singles Day that JD is taking the "e-CNY," marking its broadest-scale trial yet.

According to JD, over 100,000 customers have paid using e-CNY on the JD shopping app during the Singles Day promotional period, which first began October 31. Users also receive 15 yuan ($2.34) when they download China's digital currency app via JD's download link.

Last year, Singles Day across all platforms had a gross merchandise value of 840 billion yuan ($131.3 billion), making it bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. This year, some of that yuan will be replaced with China's central bank digital currency.

While the e-CNY is not a cryptocurrency, it is a digital version of the country's currency that, eventually, will be launched nationwide.

Meanwhile, the People's Bank of China has been gradually rolling out its digital currency across individual provinces. As of the end of October, more than 140 million people have opened wallets for the digital yuan, which has been used for transactions totalling 62 billion yuan ($9.7 billion), a central bank official said earlier this month.