(Beijing) — Paris is vying for higher status among the world's centers for offshore deposits of China's increasingly internationally accepted currency.

Paris' competitive edge over London as a yuan clearing center has improved since the Brexit vote in June set the stage for Britain to leave the European Union, according to Arnaud de Bresson, managing director at Paris-Europlace, an organization that promotes France's financial marketplace.

And Paris is going head-to-head against the German city of Frankfurt in a competition to become the European continent's leading financial hub and yuan clearing center, de Bresson told Caixin in a recent interview.

Frankfurt enjoys several advantages over the French capital, said Zhao Xijun, deputy director of the Finance and Securities Institute at Renmin University in Beijing.

Frankfurt is a domestic financial hub as well as headquarters of the European Central Bank. Moreover, Zhao said, Germany's economy is better than France's.

De Bresson said Paris excels as a "real economy" commercial center that supports multinationals as well as startups.

But Chinese companies and financial institutions do more business with counterparts in Germany than in France, Zhao said. And since November 2015, Frankfurt has been the base for the China Europe International Exchange, a marketplace trading yuan-denominated products operated by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's owner Deutsche Borse Group, and the China Financial Futures Exchange.

Which city wins the yuan-clearing crown on the continent after Brexit will "depend not only on the infrastructure for offshore renminbi trading, but also on future service quality," Zhao said.

The People's Bank of China approved Paris, London and Frankfurt as yuan clearing centers in 2014. Other centers are in Hong Kong, Singapore and 17 other cities worldwide.

Chinese currency deposits in Paris currently exceed those in London, according to Paris-Europlace, reaching 20 billion yuan ($3.0 billion) in 2015 compared to 14.5 billion yuan worth of deposits in the British capital. One reason is that 45 percent of all transactions between the Chinese and French are priced in yuan, compared to 40 percent for Chinese-British transactions.

Chinese company buyouts and investments in Europe have been growing, raising the stakes for the yuan-center rivals.

In 2015, de Bresson said, China invested $23 billion in Europe compared to $17 billion in the United States. This year, Chinese investments in Europe could reach $63 billion if China National Chemical Corp. wins regulatory approval for its proposed $43 billion buyout of Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta.

Contact reporter Dong Tongjian (tongjiandong@caixin.com); editor Eric Johnson (ericjohnson@caixin.com)