In June 2025, the People’s Bank of China established a digital renminbi international operation center in Shanghai. In September of the same year, the center was officially put into operation and three core business platforms were simultaneously launched.
After nearly a year of iterative optimization, the three major platforms will be integrated and upgraded into the “Digital RMB” cross-border settlement comprehensive service platform in 2026, officially launching branded operations. Overseas participants can achieve one-point access through Hong Kong nodes, significantly lowering the threshold for overseas institutions to access the digital RMB cross-border payment network.
For a long time, the traditional cross-border payment system has had multiple pain points: a cross-border fund transfer often needs to be transferred between 3 to 5 banks, and undergoes cumbersome message transmission, identity verification and compliance review processes. The settlement cycle usually takes several working days, and there are also information fragmentation and insufficient transparency.
Shortcomings include, for example, funds in cross-border e-commerce scenarios have been transferred online, but invoices, transaction vouchers, etc. still rely on offline transmission. The flow of information and the flow of funds are seriously disconnected, which not only increases transaction risks, but also increases the difficulty of supervision. The unipolar monopoly of the traditional SWIFT system has made cross-border payment costs remain high. A large number of small and medium-sized foreign trade companies have to bear high handling fees and lengthy capital occupation costs.
The implementation of Shubida platform has completely changed this situation.
In April 2026, China Southern Power Grid relied on the Shucoinda platform to complete the cross-border electricity sales collection business in Laos, and the settlement cycle was directly compressed from the original 3 working days to less than 5 hours; other business data shows that using the Shucoinda currency bridge for cross-border business settlement, the fund arrival time was shortened from 6 hours in the original model to 8 minutes, and the settlement efficiency increased by more than 40 times.
In addition to improving efficiency, Shucoin relies on the technical characteristics of blockchain that cannot be tampered with and information is transparent, breaking through the transmission barriers of capital flow and information flow, realizing the traceability of the entire transaction process, and greatly improving the penetration of supervision.
It is understood that the Shucoinda platform is provided with underlying technical support by the CBETS system launched by the Digital RMB Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China. It supports cross-border interconnection with the payment systems of various countries’ monetary authorities, and also supports direct access by various financial institutions. After access, institutions can obtain substantial improvements in four dimensions: operational efficiency, settlement costs, compliance management, and network interconnection.
Relevant persons in charge of internationally renowned financial institutions stated that the central bank’s digital currency is an important financial infrastructure in the era of digital economy. The exploration and practice of digital renminbi link the national credit of the central bank, the global service network of commercial banks, and the real trade needs of enterprises into a complete link that can confirm rights, traceability, and supervision, and provides a new feasible path for the construction of a global cross-border payment system.
Currently, digital renminbi cross-border payment is gradually breaking the old pattern of SWIFT’s unipolar monopoly and moving towards a new development stage of multi-network fair competition. The branded operation of the Digital RMB platform also marks that the cross-border application of digital renminbi has officially entered the commercialization sprint stage from the pilot test stage. In the future, it will bring more efficient, low-cost and secure cross-border payment options to global foreign trade companies and cross-border operators, and help continue to improve the level of global trade facilitation.
