Digital Currencies and Payment Systems: Chinese Way into Internationalisation of the Renminbi

Banking industry with its traditional payment technology based on a centralised clearing institutions started to face a huge and unequal competition. New payment platforms, new providers, and new payment tools allow to omit more expensive but safer banking system. Additionally, a distributed ledger technology (DLT) where payment is done through shared decentralised anonymous peer-to-peer network could cause a huge increase in unauthorised and uncontrolled cash flows. China is gradually increasing its international meaning in international payment system. Its consistent policy—according to the Confucian idea of work established for decades not years—tends to look at that country from a broader perspective. The purpose of this chapter is to show how new payment options and new forms of money that allow China a gradual but systematic internationalisation of the renminbi and strengthening its role as an international medium of exchange outside a traditional banking system.