International investors will keep an eye on a forum next week for clues from China’s regulators on how they plan to further open its financial markets, after Visa’s long-awaited approval fuelled hopes for deeper participation in the world’s second-largest economy.

Regulators could announce more measures at the Financial Street Forum to deepen the internationalisation of the yuan and optimise the Connect series of cross-border investment links between investors in mainland China and the rest of the world, analysts said.

“As China’s economy develops and Chinese companies expand further overseas, we need a yuan-based financial system to serve the real economies of other regions around the world, just as the United States does with the dollar,” said Liu Jing, director of the investment research department at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing.

The Financial Street Forum, a four-day event starting on Monday, will feature keynote speeches from Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), Ding Xiangqun, head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, and Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

Over 400 financial heavyweights from more than 40 countries and regions are set to gather in Beijing for discussions themed on openness, cooperation and inclusiveness.

PBOC’s nod to Visa on Tuesday, after a years-long wait, raised expectations for more opening-up measures. The US payment card company won regulatory approval to work towards setting up a wholly foreign-owned domestic bank card clearing business in China, after 40 years of handling cross-border and foreign currency transactions in the country. With a local clearing organisation, Visa would be able to settle domestic yuan transactions directly with its own network.

On Thursday, an executive of the China Financial Futures Exchange said at an event that it was steadily advancing preparations for a pilot programme for yuan-denominated foreign exchange futures, pressing forward with the opening up of derivative products.

Liu of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business said global card issuers like Visa stood to benefit from an outbound tourism rebound, despite digital payment tools from Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding dominating the domestic market. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. But international financial institutions still faced challenges in the market, he added.

The PBOC and CSRC have undertaken a range of measures to promote international use of the yuan, from issuing offshore yuan treasury bonds and expanding the bilateral currency swap facility to extending the Connect Schemes and easing overseas listings by Chinese companies.

The yuan accounted for 3.3 per cent of global payments by value in August, jumping from 1.9 per cent 10 years ago, data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication showed. The US dollar stayed on top with a share of 52.1 per cent. Hong Kong aims to include a yuan trading counter in the Stock Connect schemes by July 1.

Tools like the Connect Schemes would play a key role as China encouraged funds to “go global” legally, by presenting opportunities for banking institutions, asset management firms and professional service providers, said Xu Tianchen, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

In the future, Xu said, there would be potential to engage more sophisticated international financial institutions to supply more diverse products to meet growing demand for asset and wealth management.