Overseas banks are racing to roll out digital yuan services in the Chinese mainland, casting a vote of confidence in the prospects of the digital yuan while they expect to promote the currency's use in more scenarios including cross-border payments and financing for trade and supply chains.

Hang Seng Bank (China) Ltd, Fubon Bank China Co, Standard Chartered (China) Ltd and HSBC (China) Company have recently taken the lead to provide digital yuan services, domestic media Shanghai Securities News reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the four banks allow individual clients to link their bank cards to the app of the digital yuan and top up for both online and offline payments.

Multiple foreign banks have expressed confidence in the future development of the digital yuan and hoped to extend the currency's use in more application scenarios. "We are pleased to be among the first batch of foreign banks to join the e-CNY network and look forward to the opportunities this will create for our customers," a HSBC spokesperson told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The application of the digital yuan is making steady progress. In late October, the China National Petroleum Corporation completed a transaction settlement of one million barrels of crude oil using digital yuan.

During the Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, last week, the Bank of China introduced a solution for cross-border e-commerce B2B transactions using the digital yuan. Ant Group showcased innovative applications of digital yuan in the realm of industrial collaboration.

In January 2021, the central banks of China, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority together launched Multiple Central Bank Digital Currency Bridge (m-CBDC Bridge) project to study the application of central bank digital currency in cross-border payments.

Thanks to the m-CBDC Bridge, commercial banks' cross-border transaction costs could come down by at least 50 percent compared with existing cross-border payment methods, Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, said at the 2023 China (Shenzhen) FinTech Conference held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on Wednesday, domestic media thepaper reported.

Latest data from the SWIFT system showed that yuan's share of international payments hit a record high of 3.71 percent in September, and the currency has retained its position as the fifth most active for use in global payments, while total payments in yuan increased by 2.77 percent in terms of payment value compared with August.