Deutsche Bank becomes Europe’s first RMB clearing house

Kanyi Lui of Pinsent Masons was commenting as the German bank announced its appointment as the first European bank to be cleared for transactions in renminbi (RMB).

In an announcement, published on Tuesday morning, Deutsche Bank confirmed that China’s Central Bank had approved the lender as its first RMB clearing bank for Europe in Frankfurt. It said the move would create “a local bridge to China’s payment systems” for European financial institutions and businesses engaged in cross-border RMB transactions.

Lui, an expert in cross-border RMB financing facilities who advised on China’s first cross-border RMB financing in September 2010, said the development would be transformative for the Chinese and European financial markets. “This is not just a banking milestone: it is a financial connectivity milestone,” he said. “As Chinese and European businesses continue to deepen commercial ties, efficient RMB clearing and settlement infrastructure is becoming more important than ever.”

In recent years, China has pushed a number of policy initiatives aimed at boosting use of the currency internationally, in part to reduce the country’s historic reliance on the US dollar and to promote the RMB’s role in international trade and create more reliable offshore RMB liquidity for international institutions.

Deutsche Bank was one of the first international banks engaged in renminbi internationalisation, and in 2015 the bank joined the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, widely regarded as China’s alternative to Swift.

Lui said the bank’s designation marked “an important milestone in the continued evolution of the financial infrastructure connecting China and Europe and the internationalisation of the Renminbi”.

Although Deutsche Bank is the first lender in Europe to receive this coveted designation, there have been moves by banks elsewhere to internationalise the RMB. In June, Standard Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China were jointly named the Renminbi Clearing Bank of Africa, with capacity to clear RMB ⁠in 19 African countries.

In 2018, JPMorgan Chase was authorised as China's first foreign bank to provide renminbi clearing services in the US. In 2025, DBS Bank became the first Singapore-based bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank became the first bank in the Gulf region to serve as RMB clearing banks.

In a statement, Leo Yin, president of Deutsche Bank China Ltd., said this latest designation would allow Deutsche Bank to further connect “onshore and offshore RMB ecosystems and [expand] RMB use cases across Europe and key trade corridors” to benefit both financial institutions and corporates.