A view of the core Lujiazui commercial area in Pudong New Area, Shanghai on July 15, 2025. Photo: VCG

China extended its cross-border cash pooling policy for multinational companies operating in the country effective on Monday, a move that experts said will deepen financial opening-up and facilitate cross-border trade and investment. The policy is also an important upgrade in the institutional framework for cross-border treasury management by multinational companies in China.

Chinese analysts said that at a pivotal moment when global supply chains are undergoing profound restructuring and China's economy is accelerating toward high-quality development, the nationwide rollout of the cross-border cash pooling policy underscores China's determination to deepen reform, expand opening-up, and build a more resilient and interconnected financial system. 

Such an integrated cash management system has effectively facilitated capital circulation between domestic and overseas operations, greatly enhancing the efficiency and flexibility of fund allocation. More importantly, by providing the certainty of high-level financial opening-up, the policy has further strengthened multinational companies' confidence, willingness, and ability to remain rooted in China and better serve domestic circulation, they said.

The policy, outlined in an official notice on the centralized operation and management of cross-border yuan and foreign currency funds, took effect on Monday, according to a statement by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

The move extends a pilot program nationwide, allowing more companies to benefit from streamlined cross-border fund management.

Under the new rules, multinational companies are allowed to decide on their own the proportion of funds to be centralized, and manage yuan, as well as foreign currency funds, through the same account, while being encouraged to prioritize the use of the yuan. This arrangement enables group-level centralized allocation while preserving flexible use by member companies under the same group, and encourages businesses to prioritize the use of the local currency in business operations, CCTV News reported on Monday.

By doing this, China is pushing cross-border fund management toward institutional opening-up and creating a more unified channel for cross-border financial connectivity, analysts said. 

The nationwide implementation is another step in China's efforts to deepen financial opening-up and improve the business environment for multinational companies operating in the country, said Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China.

According to Dong, it gives multinational companies, especially smaller groups, greater flexibility in cross-border fund scheduling, centralized pooling and unified payment, which will help reduce idle funds and cross-border settlement costs.

By offering more facilitation for foreign companies in the process of financing, settlements and receipts, the country's appeal to foreign companies will further increase, Dong said, noting that the move will be conducive to the internationalization of the yuan.   

According to the Xinhua News Agency, the pilot program was launched on a pilot basis in Beijing and South China's Guangdong Province in 2023. As of the end of June 2026, more than 260 multinational companies had registered for the program, benefiting more than 5,500 member companies at home and abroad.

The policy has now been expanded nationwide to benefit a wider range of business entities. For parent companies registered in a pilot free trade zone, the threshold for setting up a cash pool can be lowered further, according to the SAFE.

The rules make it easier for multinationals to pool and allocate cross-border funds by consolidating quotas for the foreign debt and overseas lending of their member companies and allowing companies to determine how much of those quotas to pool.

The notice further streamlines registration procedures by introducing a single-window mechanism at local branches of the foreign exchange regulator, while allowing cooperating banks to handle certain registration changes.

It also specifies operational rules and requirements for ongoing and ex-post supervision to guard against risks associated with cross-border capital flows.

The new policy reflects China's ramped-up efforts to optimize cross-border fund management for multinational companies, improve convenience in cross-border trade and investment, and better support the high-quality development of the real economy, Dong noted.

As the pace of going global and bringing in foreign investment accelerates, more multinational groups are seeing frequent cross-border fund flows and increasingly diversified currency structures, which require stronger treasury coordination and risk management, Dong said.

He added that the nationwide rollout will help build a more unified channel for financial connectivity between China and overseas markets.

China will continue to optimize cross-border fund management for multinational businesses, enhance the convenience of cross-border trade and investment, and better support the high-quality development of the real economy, according to the SAFE.

Consulting firm Deloitte China said in a report published on September 11 that it believes the latest policy has opened up new opportunities for multinational groups in global treasury management. 

"The policy value lies not only in improving the convenience and efficiency of cross-border fund transfers, but also in further clarifying the risk and compliance boundaries of cross-border centralized fund operations, providing enterprises with clearer institutional guidance to guard against cross-border fund risks and enhance their global fund governance capabilities," according to the report.

Wen Bin, chief economist of China Minsheng Bank, told the Global Times on Monday that the latest policy will further improve the convenience and efficiency of cross-border fund management. 

According to Wen, the measures will help multinational enterprises better coordinate capital resources both in China and overseas, reduce financing and treasury management costs, and allow more internationally operating companies to benefit from the policy. 

He said that from a broader macroeconomic perspective, the policy reflects China's steady push to advance high-level financial opening-up, and the expansion will also help create more use cases for cross-border yuan transactions, while enhancing the financial sector's ability to serve the real economy.

China's foreign exchange reserves totaled $3.4383 trillion as of the end of August, up by $19.5 billion, or 0.57 percent, compared with the end of July, Xinhua reported, citing official data.