Nation's first successful implementation! Digital Renminbi reaches a new level: ensuring migrant workers' wages are received instantly and without interception

“Seeing the salary ‘instantly credited’ to the wallet makes me very happy,” said Wang Tonglin, a migrant worker, after receiving his digital renminbi salary in Chengdu. Behind this joy is the full-process rigid guarantee brought by digital renminbi smart contracts.

On February 6, under the guidance of the People’s Bank of China, the Digital Renminbi Operation and Management Center coordinated with business operation agencies to implement the country’s first digital renminbi smart contract migrant worker salary distribution in Chengdu. The new scenario for digital renminbi smart contracts has been added.

For a long time, traditional migrant worker salary payment methods have faced issues such as multiple steps, long chains, difficult supervision, and high risks. Delays in fund payments occur from time to time. Timely and full payment of migrant worker wages is directly related to the vital interests of a large number of migrant workers and public welfare. The launch of the country’s first digital renminbi smart contract salary payment business provides a new approach to solving the problem of wage security in the construction industry.

Smart Contracts Protect Migrant Workers’ “Money Bags”

Compared to traditional salary payment methods, digital renminbi smart contracts enable automatic salary distribution, targeted fund disbursement, and are fully tamper-proof, addressing many concerns from the source in migrant worker wage payments.

Cheng Gang, Deputy Director of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, stated that the first deployment of the digital renminbi salary payment scenario for migrant workers in Chengdu is a major innovation empowering people’s livelihood with technology.

The implementation of this new scenario for digital renminbi smart contract migrant worker salary distribution marks a breakthrough in key livelihood applications of digital renminbi, driven by multi-party collaboration and technological innovation.

In this scenario, Bank of Communications relies on the digital renminbi smart contract ecosystem service platform to open a digital renminbi corporate wallet for general contractors and load smart disbursement contracts, achieving closed-loop fund management and targeted full disbursement, preventing interception and misappropriation from the source. The contract automatically executes according to preset salary details, paying over 1 million yuan to 104 workers directly into their personal wallets. The process is transparent, traceable at each node, and instant in settlement, using technology to solve the pain points of multiple steps, difficult supervision, and high risks in traditional disbursement, providing a replicable and scalable digital solution for wage security in the construction sector.

Data empowerment enhances the accuracy of wage distribution. The “Anxin Zhu” platform developed by a local Chengdu company provides favorable conditions for the application of digital renminbi smart contracts. Its construction task orders offer clear and accurate business data, and combined with the financial management advantages of digital renminbi smart contracts, help address hidden risks caused by “separating people from cards, issuing pay slips, and confusing accounts” in traditional construction industry wage payments. This innovation improves wage supervision for migrant workers, helping them “calculate their accounts and receive their money.”

The core of digital renminbi smart contracts’ precise protection of migrant workers’ “calculating accounts and receiving money” lies in their standardized, automated, and traceable technical system. The Digital Renminbi Operation and Management Center provides the ecosystem service platform for smart contracts and formulates relevant application standards. Participating banks can integrate these standards with their own systems to flexibly develop product solutions for different scenarios.

Lu Yunhan from the Digital Renminbi Operation and Management Center explained that digital renminbi smart contracts realize the digitization, automation, and enforceability of contracts through a set of infrastructure, rules, standards, and product systems, eliminating human intervention and supporting cross-institutional interoperability.

Broad Prospects for Innovative Applications

The application of digital renminbi smart contracts extends beyond wage payments. Over the past two years, they have been piloted in areas such as prepayment fund management and supply chain finance.

According to data from the Digital Renminbi Operation and Management Center, by the end of January 2026, there have been 486,400 signed contracts and a total transaction amount of 316 million yuan in pilot applications across prepayment management, supply chain finance, corporate group financial management, and subsidy distribution.

In prepayment management, digital renminbi smart contracts demonstrate significant advantages, automatically enforcing contractual agreements to effectively prevent fund misappropriation. Multiple locations have already implemented applications. When consumers purchase services from merchants, prepayment funds are loaded into a digital renminbi wallet with a smart contract. Before actual consumption, the funds remain with the consumer; during purchase, the smart contract automatically transfers funds to the merchant’s wallet based on preset conditions, paying per use; if the card is returned or the merchant faces operational issues, the smart contract ensures the unspent funds are promptly returned to the consumer.

In promoting consumption, digital renminbi smart contracts can distribute funds to consumers’ wallets according to policy requirements at scheduled times and rules, and automatically trigger usage based on transaction time, merchant list, and amount conditions. This can effectively stimulate market consumption and promote economic growth. For example, when local governments issue “trade-in” subsidies, smart contracts can automatically determine if users meet local residency and “trade-in” conditions based on provided data, and if so, disburse funds to their digital wallets; if not, no funds are issued. When funds are transferred into the user’s digital wallet, a smart contract is loaded onto the wallet, ensuring the funds cannot be transferred back to banks or gifted, and can only be spent within designated merchants as pre-agreed.

In supply chain finance scenarios, digital renminbi smart contracts can use order data generated from long-term trade relationships between upstream and downstream enterprises to ensure that credit funds are used solely for production and operation, effectively avoiding misuse or misappropriation. Financial institutions can use smart contracts to disburse credit funds across institutions, reducing the cost of financial services for enterprises, improving post-loan management, and strengthening inter-institutional cooperation.

For example, the Agricultural Bank of China has deeply integrated digital renminbi smart contracts into Luzhou Laojiao’s supply chain, sharing data with the distributor platform to achieve precise control of loan funds, ensuring funds are specifically used for purchasing Luzhou Laojiao products.

It is noteworthy that digital renminbi smart contracts can be used both on and off the blockchain, and are interoperable, which helps banks tailor products based on their rich business scenarios. Currently, in various digital renminbi scenarios, the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge (mBridge) employs blockchain technology. Additionally, on September 25, 2025, the Digital Renminbi International Operation Center under the Digital Currency Research Institute launched the digital renminbi blockchain service platform and digital asset platform. Both are based on self-developed blockchain technology, and the smart contracts on these platforms are considered “on-chain” smart contracts.

Lu Yunhan stated that moving forward, the Digital Renminbi Operation and Management Center will continue to enrich the system’s foundational services, promote ecosystem collaboration, summarize and expand successful models; work with member banks to explore innovative applications of digital renminbi smart contracts, providing more intelligent services for industry development and social governance, and supporting the construction of the “five big articles” of finance.

(Source: First Financial)