CIPS (China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System)

What it is

CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) is China's wholesale payment and settlement infrastructure for cross-border renminbi transactions. CIPS Co., Ltd., a company headquartered in Shanghai and supervised by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), operates the system. It functions as both a Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system and a Deferred Net Settlement (DNS) system, running approximately 5×24 hours plus 4 hours for near-continuous global coverage. CIPS handles only renminbi and uses the ISO 20022 messaging standard, the same format adopted by modern SWIFT infrastructure. Key participants include China's four largest state-owned banks alongside international institutions such as HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citibank, BNP Paribas, and DBS.

History

CIPS Phase 1 launched on October 8, 2015, with 19 direct participants and 176 indirect participants from 50 countries. The PBOC designed it to reduce China's reliance on correspondent banking routed through SWIFT, which connects to US-dollar-clearing infrastructure and is subject to US oversight. Phase 2 began pilot operations on March 26, 2018, and reached full operation on May 2, 2018, adding DNS settlement and extending operating hours to cover European time zones. Annual transaction value grew 75% in 2021 alone. Russia's exclusion from SWIFT in February 2022 brought CIPS under intense global scrutiny as a potential sanction-bypass route, accelerating inquiries from central banks across the Global South.

Current state

As of Q1 2026, 1,791 financial institutions participate in CIPS: 194 direct participants (holding accounts at CIPS and settling directly) and 1,597 indirect participants (routing through direct participants). The network spans 189 countries and territories. In 2025, CIPS processed 8.44 million transactions worth RMB 180.15 trillion (approximately US$26.4 trillion), up from RMB 175.49 trillion in 2024. By March 2026, average daily volume reached RMB 920.5 billion (approximately US$133.5 billion), a 20% year-on-year rise. For comparison, the US Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS) clears roughly US$1.8 trillion per day, approximately 13 times the March 2026 CIPS daily average. Approximately 80% of CIPS transactions still use SWIFT for messaging, reflecting partial rather than full operational independence from Western financial infrastructure.

Relationships

CIPS is the clearing layer for China's renminbi internationalisation project. The renminbi's share of global foreign-exchange trading climbed to roughly 7% of daily turnover by 2025. The PBOC's domestic liquidity operations shape the interbank rates that flow into CIPS-cleared transactions. Russia's 2022 SWIFT exclusion drew attention to CIPS as a sanction-insulation tool, but China has been cautious about allowing systematic sanction circumvention, given the secondary-sanction exposure it would create for Chinese banks (see Russia Sanctions). The bilateral trade friction documented in US–China Trade has led ASEAN and Middle Eastern central banks to study renminbi settlement options. The continued dominance of SWIFT, noted in NASAがスウィフト宇宙望遠鏡の自律軌道上昇ミッションを中止、ペガサスXLロケットは打ち上げ前に飛行中断, illustrates the structural inertia CIPS must overcome. The US dollar's 89% share of global FX turnover defines the scale of the gap.

What to watch

Renminbi internationalisation is the primary variable for CIPS's long-run reach. As of early 2026, the renminbi represents roughly 4.7% of global SWIFT payment messages, against the US dollar's 47%. The share of CIPS transactions using CIPS's own messaging protocol rather than SWIFT, standing at roughly 20% as of 2022, is the operational-independence metric to monitor. Chinese government pressure for Gulf state central banks to accept renminbi-priced oil settlement would be a structural turning point. Expansion of CIPS direct-participant numbers among banks in Africa and the Middle East, where US secondary-sanction exposure is lower, is a leading indicator of the system's genuine geopolitical traction.