Saudi Arabia quits China-led cross-border currency platform
Kingdom’s central bank withdrew from programme which is part of Beijing’s effort to develop an alternative system to the dollar
Source: Financial Times
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DW NOTE
Saudi Arabia just told Beijing that de-dollarisation works better as rhetoric than policy. The mBridge platform was supposed to let central banks settle cross-border payments without dollar rails — a direct challenge to SWIFT and correspondent banking. Riyadh signed on when oil hit $112 and the Fed was raising rates into a recession. Now oil is back under $101, the dollar's share of global reserves rose to 57.13% in Q1, and the kingdom needs to price its crude in the currency its customers actually hold. De-dollarisation requires counterparties. Saudi Arabia just checked who was on the other side of the trade.