The adjustment of the global currency payment pattern is not an unattainable grand narrative, but will actually affect the wallets of foreign trade practitioners and ordinary investors.
To put it simply, the core strategy of foreign trade practitioners is to “switch the track, lock in profits, and avoid minefields”; the core strategy of ordinary investors is to “diversify allocation, embrace RMB assets, and be wary of fraud.”
For foreign trade practitioners, there are three tangible benefits.
The first benefit is a real monetary reduction in settlement costs.
In the past, settlement in U.S. dollars required 3 to 5 days for fund transfer, and the handling fee was 0.3% to 0.5%.
Now through CIPS (Cross-border RMB Payment System) and Digital Currency Bridge (m – CBDC Bridge), funds can be received on the same day, and the handling fee has been reduced to less than 0.05%.
A technology company in Suzhou used “Digital RMB + Currency Bridge” to remit 30 million yuan to its Hong Kong subsidiary, and it was completed on the same day.
Xiamen International Trade has realized a closed loop of funds with the United Arab Emirates through the currency bridge, completely eliminating exchange losses caused by currency conversion.
This efficiency improvement is a direct profit when orders are intensive and capital turnover pressure is high.
The second piece of revenue is the increase in orders from emerging markets.
Middle East oil-producing countries are the largest source of growth.
In March 2026, the proportion of RMB settlement in the crude oil trade between China and the Middle East has reached 41%, and the proportion of Saudi Aramco’s RMB settlement of China’s oil has surged from 15% at the end of 2025 to 45%.
This is not only China buying oil, but also means that a large number of Saudi and UAE companies hold RMB and need to purchase various goods and services from China.
The same is true in the RCEP area. The direct clearing of RMB and ASEAN small currencies bypasses the double loss of “first converting to the U.S. dollar and then to the RMB”, directly reducing the cost of cross-border transactions.
The third benefit is the increasingly mature tools for locking in profits.
Two-way fluctuations in exchange rates have intensified. In the first quarter of 2026, a listed company called Futaihe incurred an exchange loss of 9.85 million yuan due to fluctuations in the exchange rates of the US dollar and the euro.
However, a chemical company in Meishan, Sichuan, avoided losses of more than US$3 million in the first five months of 2026 through foreign exchange swaps and options business.
Nowadays, the threshold for tools such as forward settlement and foreign exchange swaps provided by banks has been lowered, and customized hedging solutions for small currencies (such as Thai baht and Indonesian rupiah) are also becoming popular, allowing foreign trade companies to shift from “betting on exchange rates” to “locking in profits.”
However, foreign trade practitioners must also avoid three pits.
The first pitfall is the “sanctions mine” of US dollar settlement.
In May 2026, five Chinese petrochemical companies were included in the SDN sanctions list by the United States, with annual revenue exceeding 500 billion yuan and assets facing the risk of being frozen.
Once sanctioned, not only U.S. dollar assets will be locked up, but also global mainstream financial services will close their doors.
Although the U.S. dollar is highly liquid, it carries a very high political risk premium. Companies that do business with sanctioned countries or sensitive areas must establish backup settlement channels for “de-dollarization” as soon as possible.
The second pitfall is the “credit collapse” of traditional currencies such as the euro.
Don’t think that you are safe if you change your money into euros.
In 2025, the Netherlands forcibly divested Wingtech Technology of its 34 billion yuan industrial network based on a Cold War-era law, and its overseas assets were frozen.
This shows that the Eurosystem will also become a weapon due to geopolitics.
At the same time, the depreciation pressure of the euro itself is also eroding profits. Futaihe’s data shows that between 2023 and 2025, violent fluctuations in exchange gains and losses directly affected net profits.
The third pitfall is the “operational loss” during system switching.
Switching from SWIFT to CIPS cannot be done by just plugging in a network cable.
The compatibility of the company’s internal financial system, employees’ familiarity with the new message format, and the differences in anti-money laundering standards for RMB settlement in different countries may cause an otherwise efficient transaction to get stuck.
When some companies initially connected, payment was delayed for 3 to 5 days due to operational errors, which in turn increased time costs.
There are also some investment opportunities for ordinary investors.
Opportunity 1: RMB bonds, the “ballast stone” with low correlation.
The size of the RMB bond market has exceeded 200 trillion yuan, and the 10-year government bond yield has stabilized between 2.5% and 2.7%.
More importantly, the correlation between China’s fixed income assets and the global interest rate market is less than 0.3.
When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and triggered a global asset tumble, yuan bonds performed relatively independently.
Manulife Investment pointed out that in the context of global interest rate fluctuations, the value of diversified allocation in the Chinese bond market is very prominent.
Opportunity 2: The “dividend” of being forced to open up – cross-border financial management.
As of the end of 2025, the cumulative number of participating investors in “Cross-border Wealth Management Connect” has exceeded 1 million, and the amount of fund transfers has exceeded 300 billion yuan.
In May 2026, Guangyin Financial Management also issued the first “Northbound Connect” financial product, allowing Hong Kong and Macao residents to directly allocate assets in the mainland market.
This is essentially a low-threshold participation in the two-way opening up of China’s financial market.
Opportunity Three: The “hard currency” of revaluation—gold.
Central banks around the world are buying gold at an unprecedented pace.
From 2022 to 2025, net gold purchases by global central banks have exceeded 4,086 tons.
The trading volume of RMB gold futures has led the world for three consecutive years. This asset can not only hedge the RMB exchange rate risk, but also circumvent geopolitical dependence on the SWIFT system.
However, ordinary investors also need to be careful and not step over the line.
Risk 1: The “Achilles heel” of single currency assets.
If all assets are anchored to the U.S. dollar or the euro, once a strong interest rate hike cycle like 2022 occurs or an economic recession like the one in the Eurozone, the value of the assets will shrink dramatically.
Shenwan Hongyuan’s strategy report suggests that ordinary investors should build a diversified portfolio of “fixed income + equity enhancement + commodity hedging”.
The conservative type can use “fixed income +” products as a base (historical annualized return is about 3% – 4%), and the balanced type can match 30% – 40% of broad-based index funds and 5% – 10% of gold ETFs.
Risk 2: Digital RMB “investment scam”.
An important point must be drawn here: the digital renminbi is only a digital form of legal currency. It has “payment” attributes, but absolutely no “investment”, “financial management” or “mining” attributes.
Any project under the banner of “digital RMB investment” and promising high returns is 100% a scam.
In 2025, there will be more than 20,000 cases of virtual currency fraud investigated across the country, with the amount involved exceeding 10 billion yuan. Be sure to stay away.
Risk three: the “invisible killer” of exchange rate fluctuations.
Two-way fluctuations in the RMB exchange rate have become the norm. Since 2026, the amplitude of the U.S. dollar-RMB exchange rate has reached 3.5%.
For ordinary investors, if they hold a large amount of foreign currency deposits or invest in overseas assets, if they are not careful, exchange losses can swallow up all investment income.
The final judgment is that the adjustment of the global monetary structure is not an either-or zero-sum game, but a multi-dimensional reconfiguration process.
For foreign trade practitioners, this is a transition window from “passive dependence” to “active choice”; for ordinary investors, this is a required course to bid farewell to single bets and embrace asset allocation in a multi-polar world.
The winners will not be those who bet in a certain direction, but those who can see the risks clearly and quickly switch tracks.
