As the two-way opening up of my country’s financial industry continues to deepen, the role of the RMB Cross-border Payment System (CIPS) as an important financial market infrastructure has become increasingly prominent.
The latest data released on the website of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment and Clearing Co., Ltd. shows that the average daily transaction size of CIPS in March was approximately 920.5 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 48% from 619.7 billion yuan in February, a record high in the past year; the number of transactions reached 35,740, a significant increase from 25,930 in February.
The significant growth in transaction data is closely related to the recent steady performance of the RMB exchange rate and the optimization of the institutional environment.
Data show that in March, against the background of the strengthening of the U.S. dollar index and the general decline of non-U.S. currencies, the RMB exchange rate showed certain resilience.
At the end of March, the central parity rate of the RMB exchange rate against the US dollar rose to 6.9194, with a cumulative increase of approximately 0.05% during the month.
During the same period, the three major RMB exchange rate indexes including CFETS rose across the board.
Wang Qing, chief macro analyst of Oriental Jincheng, said that the global foreign exchange market fluctuated significantly, and the RMB exchange rate was stable and relatively strong, mainly due to the current stable external economic and trade environment in my country, the continued high growth of exports, and the improvement of domestic consumption and investment growth at the beginning of the year, which provided strong support for the RMB exchange rate.
In addition, the revised version of the “RMB Cross-border Payment System Business Rules” officially implemented on February 1 this year has further improved the convenience of CIPS business.
Since its launch in October 2015, CIPS’ “Circle of Friends” has continued to expand.
From 19 direct participants and 176 indirect participants in the early days of launch, it has grown to a huge scale of 194 direct participants and 1,597 indirect participants so far, with a business network covering the world.
As a wholesale payment system specifically responsible for RMB cross-border payment and clearing business, CIPS has significant advantages in improving the cross-border payment experience.
The first is round-the-clock service capabilities.
In order to adapt to the settlement needs of different time zones around the world, CIPS implements a “5×24 hours + 4 hours” operating mechanism, which basically covers the business hours of major financial markets around the world, greatly improving the efficiency of capital flow.
The second is high processing efficiency and excellent paths.
The system supports multiple settlement modes such as real-time full amount and delayed net amount, and can intelligently calculate and select the lowest-cost and fastest payment path according to customer needs.
At the same time, through a complete liquidity management mechanism, the smoothness of massive transactions is effectively guaranteed.
Finally, it is highly compatible and highly standardized.
After the establishment of CIPS, it did not completely abandon the original traditional models such as clearing banks and agency banks, but smoothly connected them, allowing overseas banks and enterprises to access the network without significantly adjusting their original habits.
In addition, the system adopts the internationally accepted ISO20022 message standard, making the information exchange between participants more standardized and transparent.
As the scale of participants continues to grow and system functions continue to be optimized, CIPS not only strengthens the international function of RMB in the payment field, but also provides strong support for broader cross-border payment scenarios and needs in the future.
