China signs up 26 financial institutions for digital-yuan cross-border payments
China’s central bank has brought a fresh batch of financial institutions into its digital-yuan network for cross-border payments, extending a currency that began life as a way to buy noodles in Shenzhen towards the far harder business of moving money between countries.
Reuters reported the expansion on Monday, the latest in a steady run of moves designed to push the e-CNY past its domestic comfort zone.
The recruitment of more banks is the unglamorous machinery of that ambition. A central bank digital currency is only as useful as the institutions willing to handle it, and the People’s Bank of China has spent the past year steadily widening the circle of lenders authorised to run e-CNY operations.
Earlier in 2026 it lined up a further dozen institutions, among them Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and China Everbright Bank, to deepen both retail use at home and the plumbing for payments abroad.
