Residents who received "red packets" of digital yuan use the money in stores in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. (Photo: Li Hao/GT)

MYbank, backed by Alibaba's Ant Group, has been officially included and activated in the digital yuan wallet in recent days, the Global Times learned, making it the 7th commercial bank that participates in the trial run of Chinese central bank-backed digital currency.

The digital yuan wallet app was updated over the weekend, and MYbank (Alipay) - already among the operators of the wallet - became available for use upon the update.

Another link of internet bank, WeBank, which is also an operator of the wallet, has not been activated to date.

According to media reports, some Alipay users were also able to view a digital yuan column, which has been added to the main menu of the app. Alipay has not responded to the interview request of the Global Times as of press time.

Before MYbank, the six commercial banks in the pilot scheme are all traditional big financial institutes, such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and China Construction Bank.

In addition to official inclusion of MYbank, the digital yuan wallets of the six banks have reportedly also support the payment of three online platforms, Eleme, Hema, Tmall Supermarket - all owned by Alibaba, which indicated that the digital yuan wallet has opened a payment link to the ecosystem of internet payment platform.

As China's largest third-party payment platform, Alipay's application includes more than 80 million merchants, over 2,000 financial institution partners. It also covers over 1 billion users.

MYbank said in April that it is one of the parties participating in the research and development of digital yuan, and "will steadily advance the trial pursuant to the overall arrangement of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank."