Yuan now the top international payments currency in Asia

BOFIT Viikkokatsaus / BOFIT Weekly Review 2015/26

​SWIFT, the international provider of information services for the financial sector, reports that in April the yuan became to most-used currency in payments between Asian countries and the China-Hong Kong region. The yuan’s share of payments traffic between the China-Hong Kong region and the rest of Asia has risen from 7 % to 31 % over the past three years. Some 80 % of payments between South Korea and Taiwan with the China-Hong Kong region are now made in yuan, while the figure for payments with Japan was still just 5 %. The launch of new Chinese clearing banks in Australia, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand will further increase opportunities to use the yuan.

While the yuan’s share of global payment traffic is only slightly more than 2 %, the yuan has rapidly risen to fifth place (just behind the Japanese yen) among the world’s most-used currencies in international payments.

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