(7 October 2015 – Hong Kong) Global transactional services organisation, SWIFT, has this week announced that China's yuan overtook the Japanese Yen, becoming the fourth most-used world payment currency in August.
The yuan only trails the US dollar, the euro and British sterling, having surpassed seven currencies in the past three years as a payment currency.
According the report, global yuan payments increased in value by 9.13 percent in August, while payments across all currencies decreased by 8.3 percent.
The yuan reached a record high market share of 2.79 percent in global payments for the month, doubling its January 2014 figure of 1.39 percent.
Over 100 countries used the yuan for payments in August, with 90 percent of flows concentrated in 10 countries. Singapore processed nearly a quarter followed by the United Kingdom with 21.6 percent.
More than 1,700 financial institutions made worldwide payments in the yuan, an increase of 14 percent from the same time last year.
Foreign exchange transactions in the yuan by value also increased by 20 per cent in August from a month earlier, probably due to the devaluation of the yuan by the People's Bank of China, SWIFT said.
More than 50 percent of the yuan FX trading outside China and Hong Kong is done with the UK, followed by the US, Singapore and France.