According to data released by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) in October 2023, Hong Kong, China remains the world's largest offshore RMB trading center, accounting for 7926% market share. This is followed by the United Kingdom (502%), Singapore (319%), the United States (253%) and France (166%）。It is worth noting that Russia, once the fifth-largest market, disappeared from the October list.
Why did Russia withdraw from the offshore yuan market?This has to do with the contradiction between it and Swift. To recap, in February 2022, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated, and the United States and Europe imposed severe sanctions on Russia, including removing most Russian banks from the SWIFT system, leaving only a few ** banks, such as etc.
This has dealt a huge blow to Russia's financial sector, and users in Russia have had to find alternative payment methods. Some users use payment systems developed by Russia itself or other countries and regions, some users continue to use the SWIFT system through a small number of Russian banks that have not been excluded, and some users open accounts in foreign banks to meet the needs of fund transfer and payment. In 2022, the number of users in Russia using SWIFT to transmit messages shrank by two-thirds, while the amount of savings of Russians in foreign banks skyrocketed to 6., according to the Russian Dragon newspaper63 trillion rubles.
However, this reliance on the SWIFT system is not stable or secure, and risks being completely cut off at any time. This made Russia** Putin very unhappy, and he decided to ban the use of the SWIFT system from October 1, 2023, and switch to Russia's own or friendly countries' payment systems. It just so happened that at this time, Russia disappeared from the list of offshore RMB markets released by Swift in October. This confirms from the side the complete severance of Russia from the SWIFT system.