China's efforts to internationalise the yuan are bearing fruit, with a surge in yuan payments over the past 21 months, while the Hong Kong dollar's ranking has fallen, according to Swift, which operates a global international network for financial institutions.
A report said yuan payments among banks and securities firms worldwide had grown 17.4 times over the period, compared with an average growth of 1.1 times for other currencies surveyed.
The group measured the use of currencies for payments in its network, which links 10,000 banks and securities firms worldwide, from October 2010 to June this year.
It said the yuan was now the 16th most-used payment currency, up from 35th in October 2010.
The yuan is now ahead of the Mexican peso, New Zealand dollar, Turkish lira and Hungarian forint.
But it still has some way to go to break into the top of the league table, where Swift said the top six currencies - the euro, US dollar, British pound, Japanese yen and Australian and Canadian dollars - remained unchanged over the period.