In the pilot test, parents used smart contracts to sign up their kids for after-school job programs.
The state-owned Bank of China reportedly unveiled a new initiative on Tuesday to integrate smart contracts into primary school education, according to the local news source Sohu.com. Parents living in Chengdu, a city in China’s Sichuan province, will be able to sign up their kids for after-school or extracurricular activities using the digital yuan central bank’s currency, or e-CNY, thanks to a partnership between the city’s financial and educational authorities.
In the pilot test, parents first give a private educational institution a deposit for a number of lessons. After that, each lesson is proportionally bound to the deposit by a smart contract. In this way, the e-CNY payment is automatically credited back to their account via smart contract should their kids miss a lesson. According to the Bank of China:
“The program seeks to explore the benefits brought forth by e-CNY smart contracts. One potential use case is replacing the role of regulatory authorities to monitor payment transactions between parents and private education entities. Another is improving transactions’ liquidity via zero transaction fees embedded in the e-CNY design.”
In the past, the Bank of China launched an e-CNY airdrop program for citizens of the city of Chongqing as a local incentive to reduce carbon emissions. Users who receive the airdrop can use their funds to purchase scooter rentals, unpackaged food deliveries, reusable shopping bags, and public transportation tickets. According to China’s strategy to energize and digitize the economy with the help of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, over 4,567,000 merchants all over the country now accept e-CNY as payment.
