In January, Baidu further downsized 10-15%, Chinese media reported. Baidu has also begun a series of layoffs, with the first round beginning in last December, affecting employees in the company’s gaming, streaming, education, and mobile environment sectors.Last week, Tencent was reported to be cutting 20% of its workforce.Alibaba has started to make major cuts in its local food and grocery delivery business this year.Since late last year, Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Kuaishou, and Tencent have all begun to lay off people. JD’s 2021 financial reports noted that losses from new businesses, including Jingxi, expanded by 160% quarterly to RMB 3.2 million ($505,921) in Q4 of 2021.Ĭontext: JD joins a growing list of Chinese tech giants cutting staff to stay competitive in an economic slowdown.JD’s other core business units, like customer electronics and retail e-commerce, are largely safe from the cuts. The reported layoff is mainly focused on Jingxi Pinpin. Jingxi consists four main teams: Jingxi focuses on bargain deals, Jingxi Pinpin on community group buy, Jingxida on logistics, and Xintonglu on enterprise businesses.“The upcoming Olympic Winter Games in Beijing will likely boost the use of digital renminbi to a greater scope and depth.Details: JD’s layoff will affect at least 400 to 600 staff in the Jingxin unit, according to sources quoted by 36Kr. “With the e-CNY app available in major mobile app markets, we are likely to see the pilot scope continue to expand to cover more users and more scenarios,” said Su Xiaorui, a senior analyst with consultancy Analysys. People also get to experience the digital yuan on an invitation-only basis.īut today, mega apps like WeChat-which has over 1 billion users-can provide the digital yuan with a huge boost if people begin to pay with it, analysts said.Īccording to Linghao Bao, an analyst at research firm Trivium China, the Chinese are so accustomed to the likes of WeChat Pay and Alipay that “it only makes sense for the central bank to team up with the usual daily mobile apps”. Prior to the rollout of the e-CNY app, the central bank had only carried out trials in select cities, with banks handing out certain amounts of the currency under various occasions such as local shopping festivals. ![]() PBOC Governor Yi Gang said in November that China would continue to advance the development of its central bank digital currency and improve its design and usage, including increasing its interoperability with existing payment tools. “User numbers are expected to enjoy a meteoric rise after these pilot trials.”īack in May, MyBank, the online bank of Alibaba’s Ant Financial, became the first online lender to join a group of major financial institutions that have set up e-wallets using China’s digital yuan app. “The official launch of the e-CNY app indicated a deep-dive experiment of the digital yuan,” said Wang Pengbo, an independent digital finance researcher. ![]() The move aims to “allow more small and medium-sized merchants to experience the convenience of digital renminbi payments in more scenarios”, the company said in a news release. JD said all its proprietary automatic cashiers and smart POS machines now accept digital yuan as a payment option and relevant software development kits have made digital yuan compatible. ![]() Internet giant JD has made functionality available across an array of its online and offline assets, including JD’s e-commerce and finance apps, as well as 7Fresh-the fresh food chain supermarket it backs. The app also said it will explore the novel digital yuan payment experience in Beijing’s Winter Olympic Village, which is set to open on Jan 27. Once activated, the function allows users to receive remittances and pay for goods and services with digital currency in WeChat. In a similar vein, Tencent-owned WeChat, China’s largest messaging app and one of the leading payment services, also began supporting the digital yuan last week via the WeChat Pay mobile wallet. The pilot version of the app was rolled out on Jan 4. To link to two services, users need to first submit an identity authentication via the e-CNY app, the digital yuan wallet application developed by the central bank. The transaction value of the digital currency via Meituan also surged 64.4 percent compared with a week ago, the company said, adding that the number of users adding the digital yuan payment option to the Meituan mobile wallet expanded almost twentyfold. ![]() Local services company Meituan said the number of digital yuan-denominated payments jumped 42.7 percent after connecting the Meituan app with the e-CNY app, which was developed by the People’s Bank of China, the central bank. A shopper pays using e-CNY at a store in Sanya, Hainan province.Įlectronic payments via China’s digital currency have enjoyed a stratospheric rise in a matter of days after the novel payment option was made available across the country’s major mobile apps.
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