(Yicai) March 13 -- Shanghai, the Chinese mainland’s leading financial hub, will expand the Chinese yuan’s cross-border use, and together with the newly formed Digital Yuan International Operation Center, foster a new ecosystem for cross-border payments, according to the head of the city’s branch of the People’s Bank of China.

Shanghai will expand the coverage and scope of its trans-border yuan facilitation policies, including broadening the list of high-quality enterprises eligible for cross-border yuan settlement, Jin Penghui said in a recent interview with Yicai. Simultaneously, by improving the ease of business processing and the efficiency of fund arrivals, the city will better meet the needs of various entities for yuan transaction settlement, investment, financing, and risk management, he said.

Shanghai’s cross-border yuan-based receipts and payments totaled CNY32.4 trillion (USD4.7 trillion) last year, up 9 percent from 2024, accounting for 46 percent of China’s total, according to data from the PBOC’s Shanghai Head Office. Under the securities-investment category, flows rose 8 percent to CNY24.2 trillion, accounting for more than 70 percent of the national total.

Shanghai should take advantage of relatively low yuan interest rates, actively expand offshore lending through domestic and international channels, and open up more space for cross-border yuan investment and financing by upgrading and optimizing the functions of free trade accounts and building offshore financial scenarios, Jin suggested.

The city will press ahead with its high-level financial opening-up by steadily expanding institutional openness, including rules, regulation, governance, and standards, to speed its development as a global centre for yuan asset allocation and risk management, Jin noted.

The Digital Yuan International Operation Center, which landed in Shanghai last September, has launched three digital service platforms, one each for cross-border digital yuan payments, e-yuan blockchain services, and digital assets. These have injected new impetus into building Shanghai into an international financial center, Jin said.

He noted that the payments platform can resolve pain points in traditional cross-border settlement and help establish a “lossless, interconnected, and compliant” payments ecosystem.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione