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Use of yuan hits 6-month high in Hong Kong’s fast-payment system
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Daisy WuPublished: 8:00am, 19 Aug 2026Hong Kong’s fast-transfer payments denominated in yuan surged to a six-month high in July, signalling accelerating adoption of real-time cross-border retail payment channels even as mainland Chinese authorities maintain tight controls on capital outflows.
Transaction values through Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS) for yuan reached 350.3 billion yuan (US$60 billion) in July, marking a 34 per cent increase from February, according to official data published by Hong Kong Interbank Clearing Ltd (HKICL) on Tuesday.
On a year-on-year basis, transaction value increased 16.8 per cent.
Analysts attributed the sharp uptick to the expanding commercial scope of Payment Connect – a joint cross-border infrastructure project launched in June 2025 by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the People’s Bank of China – alongside broader demand for renminbi assets.
By directly linking Hong Kong’s FPS with mainland China’s internet banking payment system, the channel enables instantaneous, small-value cross-border transfers. Usage has increasingly expanded into everyday retail transactions, including university tuition, medical expenses and cross-boundary salary remittances.
“The rise in renminbi FPS transactions reflects a broader structural trend of growing renminbi payment demand, and Payment Connect is an additional catalyst by expanding cross-border use cases,” said Gary Ng, senior economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank.
The growth was also “partially due to the ongoing migration of payment infrastructure” towards the FPS system, he added.
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