Jake's View | Swift too quick to hail yuan as a major currency in trade finance

The yuan has surpassed the euro to become the second most commonly used currency in global trade finance, after the US dollar. Yuan usage in trade finance grew to 8.66 per cent in October from 1.89 per cent in January last year, according to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift).

Hip, hip, hurrah! And now, if we have done cheering, let's look a little more closely at this remarkable statistic.

Swift has used a narrow definition. It has measured only the portion of global trade financed by the traditional means of letter of credit, which interposes a bank between buyer and seller to help guarantee payment and delivery. It is not surprising that Swift should use the narrow definition. Swift is a bank international payment service. It is therefore primarily interested in how banks profit from trade finance, which happens to be when trade is conducted through letter of credit.

But an estimated 80 per cent of international trade is now conducted on open terms. Trade partners who have long done business with each other increasingly don't see the need for a bank intermediary. They decide to trust each other and not pay for this costly extra level of security.

China's foreign trade in yuan, however, is still dominated by letter of credit. Thus the only thing that the Swift ranking of global trade indicates is that exporters and importers who settle their accounts in yuan do not have that same high level of trust in each other that is enjoyed by most other traders. I can't see that yuan boosters have anything to crow about.

There is more. Along with the bar chart showing China's No2 position in letter of credit trade, Swift published another bar chart showing a ranking of currencies by value of worldwide payments.