Europe accounts for 10% of global yuan payments: report

Europe now represents 10 percent of yuan payments worldwide in value, while four European countries are among the top 10 offshore yuan centers, a private report said.

Since July 2013, European payments directly exchanged with China's mainland and Hong Kong in yuan have increased 105 percent, showing a considerable upward trend in yuan usage, Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) said in a report yesterday.

The top four European yuan centers are the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Luxembourg. Payments in yuan grew 124 percent in value in the UK between July 2013 and July 2014.

"For most of these European hubs, China still remains the main trading partner in yuan", said Michael Moon, head of payments and Renminbi at SWIFT for Asia Pacific. "In the future, we should see a bigger contribution from truly offshore flows in the internationalization of the Chinese currency".

"Over the past year, Chinese authorities and financial institutions announced new partnerships with European countries, making them official clearing centers for the yuan. These announcements have boosted the yuan trading activities in these countries. After the UK and Germany, we may see similar trends happening in France, Luxembourg and even Switzerland. In July, a bilateral currency swap agreement between the People's Bank of China and the Swiss National Bank could put Switzerland in line to become a new yuan hub in Europe," Moon added.

The yuan strengthened its position as the seventh most used global payments currency and accounted for 1.6 percent of global payments last month. Yuan payments grew in value by 3 percent from a year earlier, according to the report.

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2014/08-27/131788.shtml