France's use of the renminbi for payments has grown 249% over the past year, making it the top euro country in terms of use of the Chinese currency, according to SWIFT's RMB Tracker.
France trails the United Kingdom, Singapore and Taiwan on the list of countries, excluding Hong Kong and China, by use of the renminbi. Of the payments made between France and China/Hong Kong last month, 21.4% were made in renminbi. That compares to just 6.5% a year ago.
According to SWIFT, the vast majority of such payments were institutional transfers (95%), with only 5% customer payments.
Lisa O'Connor, RMB director at SWIFT, noted France's drive to become a leading renminbi trading center for Europe.
"French acceleration in RMB payments reflects increased competition with the U.K. since the Bank of England announced that it had signed a three-year currency swap agreement with China in March," she says. "It will be interesting to see how France's work towards setting up a currency swap agreement with China progresses, and the impact that this activity within Europe may have on the RMB."
The renminbi is the 13th most-used international payments currency with a market share of 0.74%, SWIFT says.
Earlier this month, SWIFT noted that the use of renminbi as a payment currency from Taiwan had soared 120% over the past six months.