OREANDA-NEWS. March 11, 2015. China will launch its international payment system this year, said Yi Gang, head of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

"We plan to launch it this year," Yi told Reuters on Tuesday.

Reuters exclusively reported on Monday that China aimed to launch the so-called CIPS system as early as September or October.

CIPS, which would be a worldwide payments superhighway for the yuan, will replace a patchwork of existing networks that make processing renminbi payments a more cumbersome process.