China-led mBridge posts $55.5B in cross-border CBDC flows as e-CNY use surges

A China-originated multi-central-bank settlement network has registered a sharp uptick in activity, recording approximately $55.5 billion across more than 4,000 cross-border settlements. The digital yuan dominates that platform’s traffic, accounting for an overwhelming portion of value moved. Domestically, China’s central bank digital currency has also seen explosive consumer and merchant usage, with billions of retail transactions and trillions in cumulative value processed in recent cycles. Beijing has concurrently altered policy to permit interest payments on commercial bank holdings of the digital currency, shifting its role closer to deposit-like instruments rather than pure transactional tokens. The Bank for International Settlements formally stepped away from direct stewardship of the multilateral platform late last year, framing the move as an operational handover while explicitly rejecting narratives that the network is intended as a sanctions-avoidance tool. Western central banks have pushed back with their own interoperability experiments under a separate initiative that includes major institutions such as the New York Fed, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, and testing in that program has been intensified. The volume and value metrics show that activity on the China-led network tends toward high-value, low-count transfers; a simple division of totals implies an average ticket size in the multi-million-dollar range. By contrast, the domestic ledger for the e-CNY reveals far smaller per-transaction amounts, consistent with retail payments and wide consumer distribution. Technically, allowing interest on digital balances increases the instrument’s attractiveness as a store of value and could raise liquidity held in digital form, which in turn affects monetary transmission mechanics and commercial bank balance sheets. From a strategic standpoint, the current pattern is not a sudden replacement for incumbent payment rails; instead, it represents targeted corridors where alternatives to dollar-denominated clearing could gain footholds. Over time, repeated use in particular trade and financial corridors, coupled with improved interoperability and regulatory frameworks, may gradually change settlement preferences and lower reliance on traditional correspondent banking. That trajectory will hinge on compliance arrangements, legal clarity across jurisdictions, and the willingness of counterparties to accept settlement in new formats. Observers should expect further pilots, refinements to rules for custody and remuneration, and closer scrutiny from global regulators as the technology transitions from experimental to operational stages.