Owners of Huawei’s Mate 40 in China will be able to make transactions in digital yuan from a central bank digital currency (CBDC) hardware wallet built into the soon-to-be-released smartphone.

The Mate 40 will also enable users to make NFC-enabled peer-to-peer transfers to other compatible devices using the digital currency even when they are offline.

Huawei announced the incorporation of a CBDC wallet in a post on its official Weibo account, saying that the Mate 40 “is the first smartphone to support digital renminbi hardware wallets, with hardware-level security, controllable anonymous protection, and dual offline transactions, bringing a new safe and convenient payment experience”.

In the most recent update on the e-yuan pilot programme, the governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), Yi Gang, reported that “there have been more than 4m transactions, totalling over 2bn yuan (US$299m) in the digital currency so far,” according to Bloomberg.

PBOC announced earlier this month that its digital yuan will be compatible with mobile wallets such as WeChat Pay and Alipay.

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