REUTERS
China launched a cross-border renminbi payments system on Thursday, a big step in its drive to boost international use of the Chinese currency and protect itself from U.S. spy agencies with access to the Swift system, The Financial Times reported.
"As the cross-border renminbi settlement framework approaches completion, it will inevitably stimulate greater renminbi demand from market participants," Ma Jun, People's Bank of China chief economist, said last month.
Currently renminbi payments to and from China are slow and costly to execute. China's domestic payments system only supports Chinese characters, making it incompatible with Swift, the secure messaging system banks use to exchange payment details, the report notes.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the volume of China's foreign exchange reserves continues declining. It shrank by $43.3 billion in September to $3.514 trillion.
The decline was expected as the aftermath of the yuan weakening in August. Then, China's foreign-exchange reserves fell by a record $93.9 billion in August to $3.56 trillion. The Chinese government, which was using a flexible policy of pegging the RMB to the U.S. dollar, devalued the yuan by 3.5%, which was the biggest one-off devaluation of the currency in the past 20 years.