What the plateau in China's cross-border payment system tells trade professionals about the real limits of de-dollarisation
For years, China's Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) appeared to validate one of the biggest geopolitical narratives in international trade: the steady erosion of dollar dominance. The growth figures did the persuading - transaction value up 27% in 2023, then 43% in 2024. Commentary built on those numbers concluded that a parallel payments architecture was rising fast. Then the numbers stopped accelerating. The 2025 figures tell a different story - and it is one very few people in the trade compliance space are yet discussing.
The Numbers: Rapid Adoption, Then a Plateau
In 2024, CIPS processed 8.22 million transactions totalling RMB 175.49 trillion (approximately USD 24.5 trillion / EUR 21.4 trillion), with value up 42.6% year on year. In 2025, it processed 8.44 million transactions totalling RMB 180.15 trillion (approximately USD 25.1 trillion / EUR 21.9 trillion) - growth of roughly 1% on both measures.
| Year | Value settled (RMB) | Growth in value, year on year |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 123.06 trillion | +27.3% |
| 2024 | 175.49 trillion | +42.6% |
| 2025 | 180.15 trillion | +1.0% |
USD equivalents use average exchange rates for the year in question; EUR equivalents use an indicative rate of USD 1.1465 = EUR 1.00 (ECB-referenced, June 2026). Growth is measured in renminbi, the system's settlement currency - conversions into dollars or euros shift with exchange rates and can mask the underlying trend. The renminbi's appreciation through 2025 means the same near-flat volume converts to a higher dollar figure at current rates.
From above 40% annual growth to effectively flat, in a single year. Any analysis still built on the rapid-growth narrative is now a year out of date. A sudden ceiling after years of expansion usually signals that the early adopters have been captured and that further growth is structurally, not technically, constrained. The early expansion absorbed much of the natural constituency for renminbi settlement - trade within Asia, Belt and Road corridors, commodity-exporting economies and, since 2022, much of the Russian market. Pushing beyond that constituency is proving harder.
The largest structural constraint is the currency itself. Unlike the dollar or the euro, the renminbi is not fully freely convertible: China's capital controls continue to govern how money enters and leaves its financial system. That limits how far international adoption can run, however good the payment infrastructure becomes. Add limited renminbi liquidity outside Asia and the plain fact that most global trade counterparties still want dollars or euros, and the ceiling starts to look built-in rather than temporary.
Who Actually Uses CIPS
Today's activity is concentrated among Chinese banks and their overseas branches, multinationals trading with China, and commodity exporters settling in renminbi. The participant geography confirms it: as of mid-2025, roughly three-quarters of the system's indirect participants were Asian institutions. Adoption across Europe and North America remains thin, and dollar and euro settlement continue to dominate there.
The Dependency Nobody Mentions
CIPS is routinely described as a rival to SWIFT - an alternative expressway that bypasses Western financial infrastructure. The reality is more tangled. SWIFT does not move money itself; it is the secure messaging network banks use to instruct one another to make payments. CIPS settles funds - but the large majority of the payment instructions associated with it still travel over SWIFT's messaging rails. Independent analyses consistently put the share above 80%, largely because many non-Chinese institutions have not adopted CIPS's own messaging channel. CIPS itself does not publish a figure.
SWIFT does not appear to see CIPS as a threat either. In March 2025, SWIFT signed a memorandum of understanding to work alongside CIPS - positioning that reads as partner, not rival. For sanctions-resilience analysis, this matters enormously: CIPS is not, today, a full SWIFT bypass. A payment that settles through CIPS but messages through SWIFT remains visible to - and dependent on - the infrastructure it is supposed to be circumventing.
Scale in Context
Two further figures keep the picture honest:
- The renminbi accounted for around 3% of global SWIFT payments by value as of mid-2025, against roughly 48% for the US dollar and 23% for the euro. It ranks sixth among global payment currencies.
- By the end of 2025, CIPS had 193 direct participants and 1,573 indirect participants across 124 countries and regions. The larger figure often quoted - service reach to more than 5,000 banking institutions in around 190 countries - describes reach through correspondent relationships, not membership. The two should not be conflated.
None of this means CIPS is irrelevant. A system settling RMB 180 trillion (roughly USD 25 trillion) a year is significant infrastructure, and its direct-participant base is still widening - 2025 saw the first foreign-invested direct participants in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. It is also worth resisting a false binary: a larger role for CIPS does not automatically mean a weaker dollar. Global trade is not a fixed pie, and both systems can grow as it expands. What the 2025 data challenges is not CIPS's relevance but the more dramatic de-dollarisation claims in circulation.
One development to watch: China is also piloting cross-border settlement in the digital renminbi, including through the mBridge multi-central-bank platform. These initiatives remain at pilot stage, but they are the most likely channel through which renminbi settlement infrastructure evolves over the next decade.
Why This Matters for Trade Professionals
Plenty of explainers already describe what CIPS is. The more useful exercise is asking what it means for how a business actually trades. Part of the answer sits with treasury. For multinational businesses, settlement currency is increasingly a treasury decision rather than simply a banking one - cash management, FX exposure, liquidity planning and sanctions compliance are becoming tightly connected, and the choice of payment rail sits at the junction of all four. Payment infrastructure has, in effect, become another element of supply chain resilience, alongside transport routes, customs compliance and sourcing strategy.
Six questions worth putting to your own organisation:
| 1. Settlement exposure: Do you know what share of your China-linked trade already settles in renminbi, and through which rails? |
| 2. Contract currency: Do your contracts with Chinese counterparties fix the settlement currency, or leave it open to renegotiation as renminbi invoicing spreads? |
| 3. Banking access: Which of your banking partners are CIPS participants, directly or indirectly, and what does that mean for cost and speed on renminbi flows? |
| 4. Sanctions assumptions: If your sanctions-risk model assumes CIPS offers counterparties a clean route around Western financial visibility, does that assumption survive the messaging dependency described above? |
| 5. Treasury and FX: Would settling more trade in renminbi reduce hedging costs on Chinese-supplier invoices, and what liquidity and repatriation constraints would apply? |
| 6. Monitoring: Who in your organisation is tracking whether the plateau holds, and what would a renewed acceleration signal for your exposure? |
The ECTM View
The de-dollarisation debate is prone to overclaiming in both directions - the dollar is not about to be displaced, and the renminbi payment infrastructure is not a paper tiger. What the 2025 data offers is something rarer: an actual inflection point, measurable and recent, that businesses can use to test their own assumptions.
ECTM works in close collaboration with Grayston & Company, our strategic partner and trusted legal advisors on trade and compliance matters. Where payment-system choices intersect with sanctions exposure, export controls or contractual risk, that combination of practical trade intelligence and deep legal expertise is exactly where we can help. If any of the six questions above prompted a pause, get in touch.
The question is no longer whether CIPS matters - it clearly does. The question is whether 2025 was a pause or a ceiling. For any business trading with China, both answers carry consequences worth preparing for now.
