In the field of global cross-border payments, there have always been problems of high costs and slow arrival.
For the same transfer of US$10,000, it takes seconds to transfer within your own country, but you have to wait two or three working days for cross-border transfers, and you also need to pay a handling fee of US$30 to US$50. This rule has existed for fifty years, causing misery to small and medium-sized business owners and cross-border e-commerce sellers around the world.
It was reported on June 14, 2026 that mBridge, a multilateral central bank digital currency cross-border payment platform jointly built by the monetary authorities of six places, has entered the “advanced stage” of commercial launch preparations and has determined to set up a dedicated operating entity in Hong Kong.
According to people familiar with the matter, mBridge’s fees are about half of traditional international payment systems such as SWIFT, and the payment speed can be reduced to seconds.
Its cumulative clearing scale has exceeded US$55 billion (approximately 400 billion yuan). It was only US$22 million when the pilot was launched in 2022, which has increased by approximately 2,500 times in three years. A trump card for a parallel payment track is quietly taking shape.
Traditional cross-border remittance is like a “relay race with layers of toll stations”. The remitter entrusts a local bank, the local bank finds an overseas intermediary bank, the intermediary bank then finds the agent bank in the other country, and finally the money is deposited into the receiving account.
Every time you pass a level, there is a reconciliation deadline and “tolls.”
The root cause of its slowness is triple structural obstacles: time zone differences lead to misalignment of batch liquidation windows, position offsets between different institutions must be manually checked, and compliance review in any link will directly stagnate.
The global cross-border payment market will exceed US$370 billion in 2025, and the settlement cycle for a large number of transactions still remains at 1 to 3 working days.
This set of costs really falls on individual remitters and small and medium-sized foreign trade companies. Large multinational companies can pass the costs downstream, while small and medium-sized entities can only passively act as “cash machines” for banks’ intermediary business income.
The core logic of mBridge is to eliminate middlemen and allow central banks of various countries to complete peer-to-peer clearing with digital currencies directly on the same chain.
The entire process from issuance to receipt of funds is completed simultaneously in the same operation, and the concept of “funds in transit” is completely eliminated. There is neither counterparty default risk nor foreign exchange exposure.
Caixin Media reported on June 3 that Macau commercial banks made the first batch of transfers to Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates through mBridge, and the settlement was completed within seconds.
Commercial banks are willing to access mBridge because the access platform can provide differentiated services in peer competition and open up more profitable business scenarios such as trade financing and cross-border capital pools.
Countries in the Middle East are involved. Taking Saudi Arabia as an example, China is its largest oil buyer. Direct settlement with digital renminbi not only saves the exchange cost of the US dollar transit link, but also establishes a buffer channel for sanctions risks.
On June 2, 2026, Macau officially went online and became the sixth member. 11 local banks started trading on the same day, and an alternative cross-border settlement path that can bypass U.S. dollar transshipment has initially taken shape.
However, it is not easy for mBridge to fully replace SWIFT and the US dollar.
According to SWIFT official tracking data (June 2025), the RMB’s share of global SWIFT payments is approximately 3%, while the US dollar accounts for approximately 48% and the euro approximately 24%.
SWIFT has more than 11,000 financial institutions, covering more than 200 countries and regions. The trust norms and compliance system accumulated over fifty years are difficult to be destroyed by the new platform’s technological advantages.
U.S. dollar liquidity is embedded at every level of commodity pricing and is currently unmatched by the yuan.
In addition, regulatory costs are also a bottleneck for mBridge’s large-scale expansion. Anti-money laundering (AML) screening, sanctions list comparison, KYC compliance verification in each jurisdiction and other compliance links determine its expansion speed.
The current global cross-border payment presents a “three-track” pattern: the traditional US dollar SWIFT track has the deepest liquidity and widest coverage, and its short-term position is unshakable; the CBDC digital currency track (represented by mBridge) is rapidly expanding in specific trade corridors and energy settlement scenarios, forming a compliant non-US dollar alternative; the US dollar stable currency track (USDT/USDC, etc.) has spontaneous private growth, but compliance risks are high and supervision is strengthening.
For ordinary people, cross-border e-commerce sellers and overseas freelancers will directly benefit. Halving settlement costs means that the actual success rate will increase.
The asset allocation crowd in the Greater Bay Area is also worthy of attention. The interconnection between the digital renminbi and the digital Macau patacas is still being tested and advanced, and the cost and speed of cross-border asset transfers will benefit in the future.
But be careful not to pursue various gray USD stablecoin wallets or over-the-counter currency exchange channels because of the news about mBridge. These channels have legal risks. It is a safe strategy to follow the parallel channel of the national team.
The market has different opinions on the official launch of mBridge.
Some people believe that its halving of settlement costs and second-level payment are dimensionality reduction blows, and that it will break SWIFT’s monopoly in less than five years; others believe that the network effect of the U.S. dollar and the scale of credit assets are difficult to be disrupted by technology in the short term, and mBridge is more like a complementary defense tool in specific areas.
So, do you think RMB cross-border settlement will become more and more popular in life?
Welcome to leave your opinions in the comment area.
