- Standard Chartered is expanding its yuan advisory services as the currency’s use in global trade, funding and investment keeps growing.
- The People’s Bank of China had bilateral currency-swap agreements with more than 30 countries and regions at the end of 2025, worth over 4.3 trillion yuan (about US$641 billion).
- Geopolitical tensions and market uncertainty are pushing corporate treasurers toward greater yuan use for settlement, liquidity and investment allocation.
- The bank’s pitch centres on cross-border settlement, fundraising and liquidity management for multinational finance functions.
Standard Chartered is sharpening its yuan advisory offering as the Chinese currency’s role in international trade, fundraising and investment allocation continues to widen, a trend the bank expects corporate treasurers to lean on more heavily as geopolitical tensions and market uncertainty persist. The lender’s positioning reflects a broader shift in how multinationals structure cross-border finance, with the yuan increasingly treated as a working currency rather than a peripheral one.
The scale of the official infrastructure underpinning that shift is substantial. At the end of 2025, the People’s Bank of China had bilateral currency-swap agreements with more than 30 countries and regions, with an aggregate value in excess of 4.3 trillion yuan, equivalent to roughly US$641 billion. Those facilities give counterparties access to yuan liquidity outside China’s domestic market, a backstop that makes it easier for banks and corporates to settle and fund in the currency without relying solely on open-market channels.
Why treasurers are paying attention
For executives overseeing treasury and finance functions, the case for greater yuan use rests on practical considerations rather than sentiment. Invoicing and settling trade in the currency can reduce conversion costs and shorten payment chains when a company’s suppliers, buyers or funding sources are already China-linked. Raising funds in the offshore yuan market offers an alternative to dollar or euro issuance, while holding yuan balances can support liquidity management across time zones.
Standard Chartered’s advisory push fits that logic. The bank operates across a large share of the markets where yuan usage is expanding, and its pitch centres on helping clients navigate cross-border settlement, fundraising and liquidity allocation in a single currency framework. That is a services-led play: the revenue comes from transaction banking, trade finance, foreign exchange and capital markets activity rather than from a directional bet on the exchange rate itself.
The geopolitical backdrop
The timing is not incidental. Trade tensions, sanctions risk and the search for payment channels less exposed to a single currency bloc have all encouraged diversification. Swap lines with more than 30 countries and regions give participating central banks and their banking systems a route to yuan liquidity, which in turn supports commercial use. The aggregate value of those agreements, above 4.3 trillion yuan, signals how much official capacity now sits behind the internationalisation effort.
None of this means the yuan is close to displacing the dollar in global finance. The dollar still dominates invoicing, reserves and funding markets by a wide margin, and capital account restrictions in China limit how freely the currency can circulate. The realistic trajectory is incremental: more yuan in trade settlement, more offshore issuance, more use in regional liquidity management, and a growing advisory and execution business for banks positioned to serve it.
What to watch
For investors and corporate finance teams, the signals worth tracking are the pace of new swap agreements, the depth of offshore yuan liquidity, and whether more multinationals begin reporting yuan-denominated funding or settlement volumes in their disclosures. Standard Chartered’s emphasis on advisory capability suggests it expects that demand to broaden beyond specialist China desks and into mainstream treasury operations, where currency choice is increasingly a strategic decision rather than an operational afterthought.
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