The 2025 China International Finance Exhibition kicked off Wednesday in Shanghai, highlighting cross-border RMB payments to drive global trade efficiency, reduce transaction costs, and promote the internationalization of China's currency.
Returning to Shanghai for the first time since 2015, this year's 31st edition of the exhibition has drawn participation from over 40 foreign financial institutions.
During the exhibition at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, six foreign institutions formalized their participation in the Cross-Border Payment System for RMB (CIPS) by signing contracts.
For the first time, CIPS overseas foreign direct participants cover Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Singapore offshore RMB centers. In the future, these banks will be able to directly handle cross-border RMB payment business through CIPS without having to transfer it to a third party.
Among them, Standard Bank Group, the largest financial services organization in Africa, officially joined CIPS.
"[We are] a direct participant of CIPS, so it (cross-border transactions) will be quicker and it will be less expensive. We actually have a lot of clients already asking us, who are anxious for us to launch," said Anne Aliker, head of the client coverage strategy of the Standard Bank Group.
As of the first quarter of this year, CIPS had a total of 170 directly participating institutions and nearly 1,500 indirectly participating institutions, with business covering 186 countries and regions around the world, and a cumulative payment processing amount of more than 640 trillion yuan (about 89 trillion US dollars).
"The bilateral trade between Uzbekistan and China can reach a cross-border transaction volume of 10 billion yuan per month, and this amount is increasing month by month. After accessing CIPS, the entire cross-border remittance time will be shortened from the original 3-5 days to two hours," said Li Zijian, chief representative of the China branch of the Uzbekistan-based OctoBank.
"We are in the CIPS for about close to a year. As we are starting to have more instruments and more products, we will become more and more effective to bring more people to start to use CIPS as well as options to do the cross-border transaction between Brazil and China," said Felipe Wallace Simonsen, director of foreign exchange affairs at Banco Master in Brazil.
During the exhibition, a number of bank-enterprise matchmaking meetings will be held to support the construction of Shanghai as an international financial center.
"Many foreign institutions came here, which shows that China is a huge market and also reflects the achievements of China's financial reform and opening up," said Xie Hanli, chairman of China Financial Computerization Group, an organizer of the event.
Shanghai showcases cross-border RMB payment strategies at International Finance expo
