Eight percent of China’s cross-border transactions with foreign companies will be settled in the Chinese currency, the yuan or renminbi this year, a top banking official said Wednesday.

More and more global companies are using the yuan for trade settlement, Zhang Guangping, Deputy Director of Shanghai Banking Regulatory Bureau said, adding that in the first quarter, 6.84 percent of outbound trade in China were settled in the yuan.

The yuan trade settlement has been more widely used in imports than exports, Zhang said, as foreign trade partners are betting on an ever stronger yuan. According to data published by the central bank Wednesday, a roughly 89 percent of yuan settlement was used in imported trade in the first quarter.

Tough the yuan is now still making up a relatively small slice in world trade settlements, it has been continuously gaining upside strength, according to Zhang.

A recent HSBC survey, which poled more than 6,000 exporters, importers and trades in 21 economies, showed that the yuan has been more and more popular in cross-border trades, with more than 16 percent of the traders surveyed said they planned to use the yuan in future trade settlements over the next six months.

Chinese yuan is expected to replace the British pound sterling as the third most popular currency for trade settlement globally in the next half, the survey report concluded.