On 16 June 2026 in Shanghai, 26 financial institutions signed direct participant agreements with e-CNY Center International, the cross-border arm of the People's Bank of China's Digital Currency Institute. The agreements give them direct access to CBETS, the Cross-border e-CNY Transfer Services platform, which settles payments in digital yuan. The first group includes Standard Chartered's China unit and the overseas branches of Chinese banks operating in Thailand, Singapore, Laos, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Brazil, along with units in Hong Kong and Macao.
The detail that matters to an importer is not the digital-currency headline. It is what the platform takes out of the path your money travels when you pay a factory in China.
How a supplier payment works today, and what CBETS cuts out
When you pay a factory in China, your bank does not hand the money straight to the supplier's bank. The funds route through a chain of correspondent banks that hold accounts for one another, each one checking, clearing, and taking a cut as the payment passes through. Xinhua put the standard chain at three to five intermediary banks. The transfer takes several working days, and the fees and the exchange-rate spread sit inside a rate you and your supplier never see itemized.
CBETS connects member banks directly to the payment systems of central banks and other institutions, so a cross-border transfer settles in hours rather than days, with those correspondent layers stripped out. It runs around the clock, so a payment no longer waits for two banking calendars in two time zones to line up. The platform sits under e-CNY Center International, which opened in September 2025 and folded its earlier service modules into CBETS this year.
This is a separate track from CIPS, the Cross-border Interbank Payment System that China launched in 2015 as an alternative to the Western-run SWIFT messaging network. CIPS moves traditional interbank payments. CBETS sits beside it and settles in digital yuan. Both belong to the same long project, lowering China's reliance on the dollar-based system that most importers still pay through.
What it changes for you, and what it does not yet
Be clear about the stage. The first 26 participants are banks, not importers. You cannot pay a Yiwu supplier in e-CNY this week, and most readers will not touch CBETS directly for some time. What the platform signals is the direction supplier payments are heading. Money that moves in hours instead of days, with the middle layers removed, and increasingly priced in yuan rather than dollars.
That direction is worth acting on now, because the cost it targets is a cost you already pay. A supplier who quotes you in US dollars is converting from yuan on their end and pricing the conversion, the delay, and the correspondent fees into the number. When you ask the same supplier for a price in yuan and settle in yuan, you often capture the spread the supplier was quietly keeping.
So do three things before your next order. Ask your own bank whether it is already a CIPS participant and what it can offer for RMB settlement, because many banks outside China can route yuan today without waiting for CBETS. Get a quote in yuan alongside your dollar quote, and compare the landed cost rather than the headline unit price. For any order more than ninety days out, lock the yuan rate with a forward contract so a change in how the money moves does not move your cost after the price is agreed.
The rail is changing. What protects the money is not.
A faster, cheaper payment rail does nothing about the risk that sits before the payment. The money still leaves your account and lands in a Chinese bank account you may have taken on trust. Settling in seconds instead of days only means a mistake clears faster. Before the rail matters, the factory has to be real, the contract has to be one a Chinese court will actually enforce, and someone has to confirm the goods exist.
That is the part Mila holds. A verified, English and Mandarin-speaking agent on the ground in China vets the factory, holds it to a bilingual NNN that Chinese courts enforce, and checks production before your deposit moves, all inside one WhatsApp thread you watch and run. Whatever rail your payment rides, it should go to a supplier you have actually checked first.
Sources: Xinhua, "26 financial institutions sign on as direct participants with e-CNY Center International," 16 June 2026 (26 institutions signed CBETS direct participant agreements in Shanghai on Tuesday 16 June; first batch includes Standard Chartered China and overseas branches of Chinese banks in Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Qatar; traditional cross-border transfer passes through three to five intermediary banks over several working days; CBETS reduces settlement to a few hours with direct connectivity to domestic and foreign payment systems; built and operated by e-CNY Center International under the PBOC Digital Currency Institute, which began operations in September 2025 and upgraded three platforms into CBETS this year; round-the-clock, on-chain and off-chain). Additional detail: China Daily, "China advances digital yuan internationalization as 26 institutions join cross-border platform," 17 June 2026 (first batch also includes Bank of Communications units and banks in the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Hong Kong and Macao; peer-to-peer clearing bypasses correspondent-bank fee layers) and South China Morning Post, "China accelerates digital yuan push as 26 banks join new cross-border platform," 17 June 2026 (CBETS managed by the PBOC, sits alongside CIPS, launched 2015 as a SWIFT alternative; part of China's effort to reduce reliance on the US dollar-based financial system).