Swift says 15 more countries now using yuan to settle over 10pc of trades with mainland, Hong Kong

Fifteen more countries are now using the yuan to settle more than 10 per cent of their trade and investment deals with mainland China and Hong Kong - a development known as "crossing the RMB river" - bolstering the view that the currency is becoming more popular internationally and firmly on a path to globalisation, according to the latest data from global payment system Swift.

The 15 include Germany, Canada, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia, countries that have close trading ties with China or have been aggressively promoting yuan business.

The 10 per cent milestone is a threshold set by Swift in measuring the weight of yuan or renminbi payments with Hong Kong and the mainland compared with other currencies.

"This is a good sign for [yuan] adoption rates and internationalisation," said Astrid Thorsen, Swift's head of business intelligence. "In particular, Canada's [yuan] usage for payments, which has increased greatly over this period, is very interesting since we have not seen strong adoption of the [yuan] from North America to date."

Fifty of the 161 countries that exchanged payments with mainland China and Hong Kong last month used the yuan for more than 10 per cent of their payments, including the biggest cheerleaders for yuan globalisation such as Singapore and Britain.

The currency is now used for 11.2 per cent of total payments with mainland China and Hong Kong, up from 6.2 per cent 18 months ago.