Paying with british pounds hasn’t been this popular since 2016

Bank customers are very enthusiastic about using the British pound for international payments. The pound's popularity is at its highest since mid-2016  — around the same time that Britain voted to leave the European Union.

According to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, known as SWIFT, the share of global payments made in sterling rose to 7.845% of the total in October, up nearly 2 percentage points from June.

The pound is the third most popular payment currency after the U.S. dollar and the euro. The number of dollar transactions fell slightly to 42.1%, while the use of the euro dropped to 34.4% of the total. The Japanese yen ranked fourth with a 2.95% share of transactions, followed by the Chinese yuan, Canadian dollar and Australian dollar.

The pound's jump in usage comes even though the value of the currency has come under pressure this year. It remains one of the largest developed currencies with the worst performance in 2022 in terms of value, even after rebounding from multi-year lows reached in late September.