From June 23 to 25, the 2026 Summer Davos Forum (the 17th Annual Meeting of New Champions of the World Economic Forum) was held in Dalian. This forum took “scale innovation” as the core theme and focused on the development trends in multiple frontier fields such as global economy and trade, digital finance, and technological innovation.
During the period, the relevant person in charge of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People’s Bank of China delivered a keynote speech on the topic of “Central Bank Digital Currency Reshapes Cross-Border Payments” and disclosed in detail the latest progress in the construction of digital RMB cross-border infrastructure, which attracted widespread attention from the global financial community.
The person in charge pointed out that legal digital currency has become a key variable in reshaping the international monetary system and cross-border payment ecology, providing a more transparent, safe, efficient and low-cost new path to facilitate global economic and trade transactions and local currency settlement.
The construction of my country’s digital RMB cross-border system has always been promoted in accordance with the principles of “lossless, compliant, and interoperable”. While continuing to improve the technical base, it continues to deepen international cooperation and contribute feasible solutions to the upgrade of the global cross-border payment system.
As one of the core infrastructures for digital renminbi cross-border payments, the Multilateral Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge (mBridge) is jointly constructed by multiple central banks. It is currently in a stable trial operation and is steadily advancing member expansion and business expansion.
According to disclosures, since the Currency Bridge entered the continuous operation stage of real transactions in June 2024, it has attracted 49 commercial banks to take the lead in participating, including 21 overseas foreign banks; as of the end of 2025, the cumulative transaction volume of the platform is equivalent to nearly 500 billion yuan. The ultimate goal is to develop into a new financial market infrastructure (FMI) jointly built by the central bank and widely participated by financial institutions under the model of multilateral governance, equality and mutual benefit.
At this forum, the relevant person in charge also made a new definition of the “non-destructive” concept in cross-border cooperation, pointing out that in addition to the macro-level requirement of “not intervening in other countries’ monetary sovereignty and not affecting the implementation of other countries’ monetary policies”, this concept should also be extended to the micro-level of industry development, that is, “no increase in
“Commercial banks will make additional investments, do not engage in duplicative infrastructure construction, and do not subvert the existing mature financial system,” so as to achieve undamaged industry ecology and undamaged market entities, solve the problems of high compliance, technology and docking costs caused by the fragmentation of the current global cross-border payment system, and clear obstacles for the healthy development of global cross-border trade.
The construction progress of another key cross-border payment infrastructure “Shubida” cross-border settlement comprehensive service platform (CBETS) was also disclosed simultaneously.
In 2026, with the adjustment of the digital renminbi measurement framework and the upgrade of the overall structure of the infrastructure system, the original three major business platforms of cross-border digital payment platform, blockchain service platform, and digital asset platform were integrated and upgraded into the “CBETS” cross-border settlement comprehensive service platform (CBETS), officially launching branded operations. Overseas participants can “one-point access” through Hong Kong access points to conveniently open multiple cross-border settlement businesses.
On June 16, the Digital RMB International Operation Center signed CBETS participant service agreements with the first batch of 26 domestic and foreign banks.
According to reports, CBETS adopts a hierarchical adaptation design in the access mode, supporting both point-to-point bilateral direct connection and “center-spoke” multilateral interoperability. It provides differentiated access solutions for different types of institutions: Institutions with strong technical development capabilities and direct-through processing needs can use A
PI direct connection achieves deep integration; institutions with smaller business volume can use the “out-of-box” lightweight graphical interface to quickly access; institutions that do not have independent access conditions can rely on existing mature participants to achieve agent access; various financial infrastructures can also complete rapid standardized docking through cross-border gateways.
Its core advantages can be summarized in three aspects: First, it adopts a componentized and modular architecture, which results in lower access costs and higher settlement efficiency; second, it is technically compatible with centralized systems and blockchain systems, and the message standard is compatible with ISO20022, which facilitates seamless connection with the internal systems of commercial banks; third, its participation arrangements are highly inclusive and its business scenarios are scalable. It can handle digital RMB cross-border consumption scenarios such as barcode payments and “bump”, as well as large wholesale businesses such as remittances, trade, and investment and financing settlements.
Currently, CBETS is based on a unified technology base and supports three major subsystem businesses through modular design. It has built a complete cross-border payment service system covering both off-chain and on-chain, taking into account retail and wholesale, and supporting trade and finance. In the future, it will provide more convenient and efficient payment infrastructure support for global digital economic and trade transactions.
