Digital Yuan Cross-Border Network Expands Steadily

China’s digital yuan is steadily widening its cross-border footprint, with the number of financial institutions seeking direct access to its international settlement platform rising sharply and new payment links taking shape across Asia. According to Xinhua, an additional 39 domestic and overseas financial institutions had submitted applications by the end of September 2026 to join the “CBETS” cross-border settlement platform as direct participants, following the first batch of 26 institutions that signed up in June.

The expansion reflects Beijing’s broader effort to internationalize the e-CNY central bank digital currency (CBDC) and to broaden its use in cross-border trade, investment and retail transactions.

A Unified Cross-Border Platform

CBETS — formally the 数字人民币跨境结算综合服务平台, or “数币达” — is operated by the Digital RMB International Operation Center, established in Shanghai under the PBOC’s Digital Currency Institute. The platform consolidates what were three separate systems — a cross-border digital payment platform, a blockchain services platform and a digital asset platform — into a single, branded infrastructure.

According to the Xinhua report, CBETS supports both bilateral interconnection with overseas monetary authorities’ payment and CBDC systems and direct access by overseas financial institutions. It covers both cross-border trade settlement and person-to-person cross-border mobility.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s 17th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (Summer Davos) in June 2026, Mu Changchun, Director of the PBOC’s Digital Currency Institute, framed the initiative as a response to fragmentation in the global monetary system. “The international monetary system has seen new variables… the industry has shown a tendency toward fragmentation,” he said, according to a transcript published by Mobile Payment Network. “This invisibly raises the compliance, technical and connectivity costs of cross-border payments.”

Mu extended the principle of “non-harm” (无损) from the macro level of currency sovereignty to the micro level — pledging not to increase commercial banks’ investment, not to build duplicate infrastructure and not to disrupt the existing financial system.

Trade and Retail Both in Scope

For cross-border trade, CBETS has launched a dedicated service brand, CBETS LIFT (数币达·励付), focused on trade settlement and trade finance. As Yicai reported, the brand uses unified ledgers and smart contracts to connect trade, shipping, freight and financing chains, aiming to achieve “three flows in one” — information, capital and documents — and to overcome long-standing bottlenecks in traditional cross-border trade finance.

CBETS LIFT has already completed multiple real transactions covering import and export scenarios. Guangxi Huike, for example, procured electronic components through the Guangxi trade digitalization platform, with the Agricultural Bank of China using on-chain data to approve credit and direct funds to an overseas supplier. Separately, Shanghai Shengshui Industrial purchased goods from Singapore Yongchuang International, with the Bank of Communications verifying credit on-chain and directing funds to the recipient’s corporate e-CNY wallet.

The first movers for CBETS LIFT are the trade digitalization service platforms of Shanghai, Guangxi and Fujian, which have already connected to enable coordinated operations.

For individuals, the overseas version of the Digital RMB App supports wallet registration with mobile numbers from more than 210 countries and regions. Overseas visitors to China can top up and then consume across all online and offline scenarios. Visual hard wallets and dual-card fusion hard wallets are designed to accommodate overseas users’ card-swipe habits while adapting to China’s QR-code acceptance environment, supporting QR scanning, “tap-to-pay” and balance inquiries.

Interconnection Across Asia

Under what Mu described as the “central bank payment system interconnection” model, CBETS has achieved interconnection with Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS, “转数快”) and Laos’s National Payment Network (LAPNet), and is piloting support for cross-border digital yuan payment in Singapore. Authorities are also working to connect Macau’s digital pataca system with CBETS.

In a separate milestone, Bank of China became a CBETS direct participant in July 2026 and completed the first batch of cross-border retail transactions in Singapore. BOC Hong Kong became the world’s first CBETS overseas RMB custodian bank, providing cross-border digital yuan funding services for overseas direct participants’ settlement wallets. Bank of China highlighted the platform’s advantages as “low access cost, high settlement efficiency, strong system compatibility and rich business scenarios,” offering round-the-clock smart digital payment services across Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Laos and Thailand.

Mu also pointed to the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge, mBridge, co-built by the PBOC with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Macau’s AMCM, the Central Bank of the UAE and the Bank of Thailand. Since entering continuous real-transaction operation in June 2024, mBridge has attracted 49 participating commercial banks, 21 of them foreign, with cumulative transaction volume approaching RMB 500 billion by the end of 2025.

Why It Matters

The steady expansion of CBETS comes as global interest grows in alternatives to dollar-based payment systems such as SWIFT, and as stablecoins and other digital assets reshape cross-border finance. Mu described CBDCs, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies as “key variables” reshaping the international monetary system.

Analysts note that the “hub-and-spoke” design — allowing participants to “connect once and reach the whole network” — is intended to lower participation barriers and avoid duplicated infrastructure. The platform is positioned as compatible with ISO 20022 messaging standards and with both centralized and blockchain-based systems.

The approach emphasizes interoperability over exclusion: Mu said the platform is open to economies “whether or not they have started their own CBDC process.” That inclusive framing may help Beijing broaden adoption, though the pace of cross-border uptake will depend on regulatory coordination and commercial incentives in each jurisdiction.

What to Watch

Several questions remain open. The recent surge in CBETS applications will need to be converted into live, transacting participants rather than signed agreements. The Singapore pilot and the planned Macau link will test whether bilateral interconnection models can scale. And CBETS LIFT’s expansion beyond its three pilot regions will indicate whether the trade-finance model is genuinely replicable.

For now, the trajectory is clear: China is building the plumbing for a more internationalized digital yuan, one interconnection at a time.