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Comment by xingped | Hacker News Reader

It's a little confusing, but technically RMB (renminbi) is the official name of the currency and CNY (yuan) is the base unit of the currency. Think of it like the difference between USD ("US Dollar") vs "dollar and cents", except there is no fractional yuan equivalent of cents, so it's all just yuan.

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So the conversation might go, "Hi we're Deutsche Bank - we're able to clear renminbi transactions up to one million yuan." ?

That would most likely be the most correct way to say it, yes.

Pretty sure the jiao (角) (1/10th of a yuan) is still in use?

Oh yeah, you're right, I forgot about that. It doesn't really get used much except occasionally for very small transactions, usually ones less than 10yuan.

nobody really use jiao (1/10th RMB/CNY), same as nobody really use yuan (CNY/RMB)

they are called mao (1/10th RMB/CNY) and kuai (CNY/RMB) in China

but mao pretty much dont exist anymore now with electronic QR payments everywhere even in food stalls, heck even beggars have QR codes and fen is for many many years more like some monopoly money papers

No there are cents, they are called fen (分).

It's in Japan that it's all just Yen.

Yeah, you're right, you just literally never see any transaction using the 0.01 unit (fen) and only very rarely see any transaction use the 0.1 unit (jiao).

Isnt 0.1 one mao?

That's another name for it, yes. Similarly, yuan is sometimes colloquially called kuai. Sort of like dollars vs bucks.

Japan has sen (銭) as well, the coins were just inflated into oblivion years ago. Still used for eg stock prices though.

Oh interesting. In China it is still used (you can still see prices with decimals beyond share prices and petrol stations) though on the way out.

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