On June 16, digital renminbi cross-border services ushered in the latest remarkable progress: the first batch of 26 financial institutions signed up to access the digital renminbi international operation center.
This move marks a solid step forward for digital renminbi in the field of cross-border services.
In recent years, the global traditional cross-border payment system has exposed shortcomings such as low efficiency, high cost, and limited coverage, which have seriously restricted the efficient flow of international monetary funds.
With the accelerated application of emerging technologies in the field of cross-border payments, legal digital currencies have provided new ideas for industry transformation and upgrading and breaking development bottlenecks.
In June 2025, the Governor of the People’s Bank of China announced the establishment of a digital RMB international operation center in Shanghai to serve the construction of cross-border and offshore systems.
In September of the same year, the center was officially put into operation and launched three major business platforms: cross-border digital payment, blockchain services, and digital assets.
Since this year, the Digital RMB International Operation Center has further integrated and upgraded functions, iteratively upgrading the original three platforms into the “CBETS” cross-border settlement comprehensive service platform (CBETS).
Overseas participants can access it through the Hong Kong access point and open multiple businesses conveniently, taking the digital renminbi cross-border infrastructure service capabilities to a new level.
Taking actual business as an example, in April this year, China Southern Power Grid relied on the “Doucoinda” platform to successfully collect cross-border electricity sales in Laos in digital RMB.
This business adopts a cross-border bilateral model, eliminating the need for intermediary agent banks and significantly compressing the settlement cycle from the traditional 3 working days to less than 5 hours.
Deputy Director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China introduced that CBETS not only supports cross-border interconnection with the payment systems and legal digital currency systems of various monetary authorities, but also supports direct access by financial institutions.
The first batch of 26 participants who have signed up for access are diverse in type and cover a wide range of areas, including Standard Chartered China and other foreign-funded corporate banks in China, as well as overseas branches of many Chinese banks in Thailand, Singapore, Laos, Qatar and other places; both state-owned banks are actively deploying, and joint-stock commercial banks are also attracted to participate.
Multiple parties are working together to promote the platform’s technological advantages and service value, accelerating its transformation into a strong driving force that empowers the real economy.
Under the traditional model, a cross-border fund often has to move through 3 to 5 intermediary banks and go through tedious processes such as message verification and compliance review.
“CBETS uses a unified digital RMB cross-border transfer gateway to support one-point access for domestic and foreign participants and monetary authorities, eliminating the duplication of construction costs caused by multi-party docking.” said a senior manager of the Operations and Channel Management Department of the Bank of Communications.
At the same time, the “Shubida” platform also shows advantages in information traceability and intelligent contract fulfillment.
In terms of cross-border e-commerce payment collection, under the traditional model, information flow and capital flow are disconnected from each other. However, the cross-border e-commerce payment collection service launched by the “Shubida” platform opens up the two types of information transmission and enables the traceability of information throughout the entire process.
In addition, relying on the smart contract function, the “Shubida” platform launches smart corporate order payment services to make cross-border trade settlement more intelligent and worry-free.
The continuous development of digital RMB cross-border services is injecting new vitality into cross-border trade facilitation and high-level financial opening up.
