Mainstream metrics may understate the role of China’s currency in global payments, as a growing share of transactions is now routed through Beijing’s own cross-border payment system and not fully reflected in conventional data sets, analysts say.
This could help explain the gap between Beijing’s official narrative – which describes the yuan as the world’s third-largest payment currency – and readings from tracking systems such as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift).
“As alternative systems emerge, Swift will be less of an accurate mirror for international payments,” said Xu Tianchen, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Payments conducted through China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) and other bilateral settlement arrangements largely fall outside Swift’s radar, he added, because the network cannot capture transactions that do not use its messaging infrastructure.
“Whether the yuan gains or loses share in Swift statistics is perhaps no longer relevant,” he said.
At the Lujiazui Forum last year, People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng said the yuan had already become the world’s third-largest payment currency.
By contrast, Swift’s monthly data showed the yuan ranking between fourth and sixth globally in terms of payment share in 2025. The latest figures put its share at 2.74 per cent of global payments by value in February, placing it sixth.
