THE Chinese yuan gained two places and became the 11th-biggest world payment currency last month, overtaking the Thai Bhat and Norwegian Krone, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication said today.

"The yuan continues to grow in relation to other currencies," Patrick de Courcy, head of markets at SWIFT for Asia-Pacific, said in a statement. "In comparison to other months, we have seen the global payments currencies in value decrease by 4.5 percent in June, whereas the yuan only decreased by 1.3 percent."

Growing yuan payments from offshore markets such as the United Kingdom continued to support the international use of the Chinese currency. Over the past two years, the yuan's market share in international payments has more than tripled when other Asian currencies stayed flat, according to the Brussels-based messaging service provider for financial institutions.

Citibank China said that despite short-term depreciation pressure, the yuan is expected to strengthen to 6.08 per US dollar in the last quarter of 2014.