Data from the Qingdao branch of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) show that in the first quarter of this year, Qingdao's cross-border renminbi (RMB) settlement volume reached 151.57 billion yuan, up 28% year-on-year, surpassing 150 billion yuan in a single quarter for the first time. This accounted for 41.7% of the city's total cross-border receipts and payments in all currencies.

The use of renminbi in cross-border goods trade continued to expand in the first quarter with settlement volume reaching 108.7 billion yuan, up 25.2% year-on-year. This accounted for 37.5% of total cross-border receipts and payments for goods trade, an increase of 2.6 percentage points from the end of last year. The number of enterprises in Qingdao conducting cross-border RMB business rose to 20,542 with all major indicators reaching record highs.

The Qingdao branch of the PBOC has focused on leading through targeted initiatives since the beginning of the year, launching campaigns to boost RMB usage in goods trade, expand first-time users and key clients, and promote cross-border RMB business through competitions. Financial institutions were guided to categorize enterprises into key clients, growth clients, and untapped clients, and to provide differentiated services accordingly to ensure full coverage in outreach to key clients and engagement with untapped clients. The branch distributed lists to banks in Q1 2025, identifying 21,132 untapped clients and 532 key clients. Banks across Qingdao quickly assembled financial service teams and adopted tailored strategies to deliver personalized service plans such as the one-policy-per-enterprise package for key clients, one-policy-per-bank package for industry clients, and one-policy-per-group package for specialized client clusters. These efforts resulted in 598 new enterprises initiating cross-border RMB business during the quarter.

The PBOC Qingdao branch has also actively encouraged enterprises to make full use of the Two Markets, Two Resources framework. The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by a cumulative 525 basis points since March 2022, highlighting the cost advantage of RMB financing. To help companies seize this opportunity, the PBOC has instructed banks to regularly update enterprises on domestic and international financing rates across currencies and to promote effective use of cross-border RMB cash pooling policies. Cross-border financing in Qingdao rose 62.1% year-on-year in the first quarter, with cross-border RMB cash pool transactions surging 116.1%, allowing private businesses to save a total of 250 million yuan in financing costs.

As of now, Qingdao has 10 enterprises registered for cross-border two-way RMB cash pooling and 2 enterprises participating in the integrated domestic and foreign currency cash pool pilot program, with cumulative cash pool transactions totaling 67.4 billion yuan.