e-CNY settlement channels between Guangxi and Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore are now open, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Guangxi branch said at its third-quarter briefing on October 30. The branch said it will extend e-CNY use across the whole autonomous region as soon as possible.
Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank, based in Nanning, was approved on August 14 as an e-CNY operating institution in the 2.0 tier (2.0层运营机构), the first local operator in Guangxi. On September 18, at the China-ASEAN Financial Cooperation and Development Forum, the CBETS LIFT service (数币达·励付) was released and Guangxi launched a Beibu Gulf trade platform that was among the first regional platforms to join it. A forestry supply-chain project using e-CNY smart contracts cut settlement from several weeks to one or two days. On September 16 in Dongxing, on the Vietnam border, 72 border traders settled 542,800 yuan of imported lobster through smart contracts: funds were frozen in their wallets at order, released to a cooperative once customs checks cleared, then paid on to Vietnamese sellers.
Guangxi cross-border figures for the first three quarters of 2026, from the same briefing:
- US$65.77 billion in cross-border receipts and payments, up 24.6%
- 19.7% growth in receipts and payments with ASEAN countries
- US$55.04 billion in goods trade receipts and payments, up 28.8%
- US$34.29 billion in bank foreign exchange settlement and sales, up 19.9%
Why it matters: Most e-CNY cross-border work so far has run through the big state banks and national platforms such as mBridge. Guangxi now has a local bank licensed to run e-CNY wallets and smart contracts, and it is using them for small border traders and timber suppliers whose payments are hard to monitor. The branch gave no e-CNY share of the US$65.77 billion, and that number will show whether the ASEAN channels carry real trade volume.
Sources: 移动支付网 Mpaypass, October 30, 2026; 中国新闻网 China News Service, October 30, 2026, and 中国新闻网 China News Service, September 17, 2026 (Chinese-language sources, translated)
Image: EditQ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
