The innovative tool of digital RMB - smart contracts - is demonstrating its unique advantages in multiple scenarios, such as timely payment of wages to migrant workers, ensuring that prepaid consumption is "consumed once and transferred once", and avoiding the risk of fund abuse or misappropriation in the supply chain. The so-called digital RMB smart contract, in simple terms, is a digital protocol that sets rules in advance, such as specifying where to spend money, how long to use it up, and automatically executes upon expiration or meeting conditions. This is not only an important direction for the innovation of digital RMB, but also one of the characteristics that distinguish digital RMB from other electronic payment tools. The entire process of instant payment of wages can be traced back to February this year. At a construction site in Chengdu High tech Zone, Sichuan Province, the first digital RMB smart contract payment service for migrant workers in China was launched, and more than 1 million yuan in salary was paid to 104 workers. The salary is directly sent to the phone, with clear details, so you don't have to worry about your card being deducted or your money being delayed. You can work more diligently and with peace of mind. ”Worker Wang Tonglin said this after receiving his digital RMB salary. In his opinion, this new method is both convenient and fast in terms of receiving funds. It can be operated directly with a mobile phone without the need for additional bank cards. The digital RMB smart contract technology provides a new solution for solving the problem of wage arrears among migrant workers, with wages arriving in seconds, unable to be intercepted, and traceable throughout the process. In this scenario of migrant worker wage payment, relying on the smart contract ecosystem service platform, the digital RMB business operation institution Bank of Communications opened a unit wallet for the general contracting enterprise and loaded the smart payment contract to ensure that the funds would not be misappropriated and paid in full according to the wage details. It is understood that the digital RMB smart contract is a technology that enables automatic payment transactions according to predetermined conditions. The fundamental difference between it and traditional digital RMB payroll lies in its conditional triggering feature. In the scenario of salary distribution, the system automatically triggers salary distribution according to preset conditions through smart contracts. At the end of last year, the People's Bank of China issued the "Action Plan for Further Strengthening the Management Service System and Related Financial Infrastructure Construction of Digital RMB", which clarified the digitalization plan of "account system+coin string+smart contract", proposed to upgrade the existing account system, promote the application of emerging technologies on the basis of new accounts (digital RMB wallets), enhance the digitalization and intelligence level of RMB issuance, circulation, payment and other links, upgrade the digital RMB smart contract ecosystem service platform, and support the construction of an open source ecosystem for smart contracts. The person in charge of the Digital RMB Operation and Management Center introduced that the digital RMB smart contract realizes the digitization, automation, and mandatory execution of contracts through a set of infrastructure, rules, standards, and product systems, eliminating human intervention and supporting cross institutional interoperability. Under the guidance of the People's Bank of China, the Digital RMB Operation and Management Center is specifically responsible for providing a digital RMB smart contract ecosystem service platform and developing corresponding smart contract application standards. Participating banks can integrate with their own business systems on this basis, and flexibly create product solutions for different application scenarios. In the view of the relevant person in charge of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, as a digital form of legal tender, digital RMB has trust advantages, interoperability advantages, and latecomer advantages in establishing an ecosystem that supports the application of smart contracts. It is conducive to improving transaction transparency and intelligent level of fund management, reducing settlement and compliance costs. At present, digital RMB smart contracts have been successfully applied in government subsidies, retail marketing, prepaid fund management and other fields. The benefits of managing prepaid funds to effectively promote consumption through digital RMB smart contracts go far beyond ensuring wage payments, but also ensuring the safety of prepaid consumption, avoiding fund abuse or misappropriation, and effectively promoting consumption. Many consumers have fallen into the trap of prepaid consumption. I just topped up the annual fee of 8000 yuan at the yoga studio, and the merchant suddenly closed down and ran away the next month, "Beijing resident Xiao Du told reporters. Since then, she has developed a resistance to prepaid consumption. The emergence of digital RMB smart contracts can precisely solve this governance problem. The staff of the Digital RMB Operation Management Center introduced that the prepaid funds enter the digital RMB wallet loaded with smart contracts, and the prepaid funds still belong to the consumers before actual consumption. When users make purchases, the smart contract will automatically transfer funds to the merchant's wallet based on preset conditions, with one-time payments. In case of card refunds or abnormal business operations by the merchant, the smart contract will ensure that the unused money is promptly returned to the consumer. Simply put, it means' consume once, transfer once ', completely changing the passive situation of the traditional prepayment model of' money paid first, consumption later '. Promoting consumption, digital RMB smart contracts can also show their potential. Smart contracts can be issued to consumers' digital RMB wallets according to policy requirements, at agreed times and rules, and automatically triggered for use based on the agreed transaction time, merchant list scope, consumption amount, and other conditions. This can effectively stimulate market consumption and promote effective economic growth. For example, local governments issue "trade in" subsidies, and smart contracts can automatically determine whether users have local household registration and meet the "trade in" conditions based on data provided by local governments. During the Spring Festival, many local governments and digital RMB operating institutions carried out activities such as distributing red envelopes and full discount payments to promote consumption with digital RMB. Industry insiders say that by loading smart contract functions, digital RMB red envelopes can fully meet the needs of complex scenarios and flexible customized consumer subsidy policies, ensuring precise and direct consumer incentives. In the field of supply chain finance, digital RMB smart contracts can ensure that enterprise credit funds are only used for production and operation based on the order data formed by long-term trade transactions between upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain, avoiding the risk of fund abuse or misappropriation. Financial institutions can achieve cross institutional distribution of credit funds through digital RMB smart contracts, further reducing the cost of obtaining financial services for enterprises, enhancing post loan management capabilities of financial institutions, and strengthening collaborative cooperation among financial institutions. According to the latest data, as of the end of January 2026, digital RMB smart contracts have been piloted in areas such as prepaid fund management, supply chain finance, enterprise group financial management, and subsidy distribution, with a total of 486400 signed contracts and a cumulative transaction amount of 316 million yuan. Innovative measures continue to be applied in a wider range of scenarios as we enter 2026, and digital RMB innovation measures continue to emerge. On January 1, 2026, after 10 years of research and pilot, the digital RMB officially completed the transition from version 1.0 to 2.0, upgrading from "digital cash" to "digital deposit currency". On January 8, 2026, the Digital RMB Operation and Management Center launched the "Carbon Inclusive" mini program service within the Digital RMB APP and was the first to launch it in the Shanghai area. After users activate this service, the carbon credits generated from their daily green and low-carbon behaviors will be automatically collected into the "Carbon Inclusive" account and can be exchanged for digital RMB. If the interest rate upgrade of Digital RMB 2.0 is to "add revenue" to the wallets of ordinary people, then the various new scenarios that are densely implemented with smart contracts can better protect the "wallets" and "add convenience" to life. In which application scenarios will digital RMB smart contracts be further enriched in the future? Dong Ximiao, Chief Economist of Zhaopin and Deputy Director of Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, told our reporter that the future application scenarios of digital RMB smart contracts are showing broad space with policy optimization and technological evolution, and promoting digital RMB to become a "smart currency" that accurately serves the real economy. In the next stage, digital RMB smart contracts are expected to expand in areas such as cross-border payments and trade settlements, smart elderly care and livelihood services, and multi-level fund management for enterprises. For example, based on the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge project, smart contracts can be applied to a wider range of cross-border scenarios, such as cross-border e-commerce, study abroad remittances, and other small high-frequency payments, to achieve automatic triggering of payment and foreign exchange compliance checks. Smart contracts can also ensure that pension subsidies and long-term care insurance funds are used exclusively and paid directly to designated service providers, preventing funds from being misappropriated or abused. Large enterprise groups can use smart contracts to achieve multi-level fund management, such as automatically allocating operating funds based on the budgets and actual needs of each subsidiary and department, and penetrating monitoring the use of large funds to improve the efficiency of fund utilization and risk control capabilities. The person in charge of the Digital RMB Operation and Management Center introduced that the next step will be to summarize and promote existing models while collaborating with member banks to strengthen innovative exploration of the application of digital RMB smart contracts, providing more intelligent services for industry development and social governance. Several interviewed experts stated that the expansion of the application scenarios of digital RMB smart contracts will effectively strengthen the core values of digital RMB as a new generation of financial infrastructure, namely programmability, traceability, and high security. These capabilities not only differentiate from traditional electronic payments, but also provide a technological foundation for the functional extension of the RMB in the digital economy era, further consolidating the strategic positioning of digital RMB in the payment system. (New Society)