The most consequential financial debate inside BRICS may no longer be about creating a dramatic alternative to the US dollar. It is increasingly about something less spectacular but potentially more achievable: changing the infrastructure through which money moves across borders, while demanding a larger voice for emerging economies in the institutions that govern the global financial system.
Meeting in Mumbai ahead of the BRICS Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, finance ministers and central-bank governors of the expanded grouping called for reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and other multilateral development institutions, while advancing work on interoperable payment systems and greater use of national currencies in trade and investment.
The message is significant because it indicates a more pragmatic direction for BRICS financial cooperation. Rather than attempting to construct a common currency—a politically ambitious proposition complicated by widely divergent monetary systems—the grouping is concentrating on the financial plumbing that determines how trade is actually settled.
The BRICS Payment Task Force is examining interoperability between payment and messaging systems under the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative. The objective is to make cross-border transactions faster, cheaper, more accessible, transparent and secure. Importantly, the finance chiefs acknowledged that there is “no one-size-fits-all approach” to promoting local-currency settlements and stressed that national priorities would have to be respected.
That qualification matters enormously for India. New Delhi has reasons to support greater payment connectivity without turning BRICS into an explicitly anti-dollar financial coalition. India already possesses sophisticated domestic digital-payment infrastructure and has been expanding international connectivity around its payment platforms. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra has also indicated that BRICS countries have been discussing links between fast-payment systems and central-bank digital currencies.
For India, therefore, the strategically useful objective is not necessarily de-dollarisation. It is optionality.
If Indian exporters and importers can settle more transactions directly in rupees and partner-country currencies, or use interoperable digital-payment networks without routing every transaction through traditional correspondent-banking chains, transaction costs and settlement times could potentially decline. Such infrastructure could also make trade among emerging economies less vulnerable to disruptions in particular international financial channels.
But moving from political intent to financial architecture will be difficult. Local-currency settlement works most efficiently when trade flows are reasonably balanced. When one country persistently exports far more to another than it imports, the exporting country accumulates the importing country’s currency. Unless that currency can be invested, converted efficiently or used to purchase other goods and assets, the settlement mechanism begins encountering practical constraints.
Exchange-rate volatility creates another problem. Businesses generally prefer currencies with deep, liquid foreign-exchange markets and reliable hedging instruments. The dollar’s position in global trade is sustained not simply by American geopolitical influence but by the depth of US capital markets, dollar liquidity, established correspondent-banking networks and the availability of dollar-denominated financial instruments.
BRICS cannot replicate that ecosystem merely by political declaration. Payment interoperability raises another set of questions. Member countries have different banking regulations, capital controls, data-governance regimes, cybersecurity standards, anti-money-laundering frameworks and monetary-policy systems. BRICS officials themselves have recognised differences in the legal, institutional, regulatory and technical frameworks of member economies.
For India, security and sovereignty will therefore be central considerations. Connecting payment networks cannot mean creating unrestricted access between national financial infrastructures. Any architecture involving India would require clearly defined rules governing authentication, transaction data, settlement finality, cybersecurity, dispute resolution and regulatory oversight.
The second major strand of the Mumbai statement—reform of the IMF, World Bank and multilateral development banks—is arguably more politically achievable.
BRICS finance chiefs called for greater representation of emerging-market and developing economies in these institutions, including changes that better reflect their growing weight in the global economy. The demand reflects a longstanding argument from developing countries that voting power and governance structures created around the post-Second World War economic order have not evolved sufficiently alongside the shift in global economic activity towards Asia and other emerging markets.
The New Development Bank (NDB), established by BRICS, provides another route. Finance officials have supported expanding its capacity to mobilise resources, increase local-currency financing and fund sustainable and inclusive development. Yet BRICS is simultaneously confronting an increasingly fragmented trading environment.
The finance ministers and central-bank governors expressed “serious concerns” over unilateral trade and finance-related actions, including higher tariffs and non-tariff measures that they said distort trade and are inconsistent with WTO rules. The statement reflects broader anxiety among emerging economies that tariffs, sanctions, export controls and financial restrictions are increasingly being deployed as instruments of geopolitical competition.
India’s challenge during its BRICS presidency is therefore one of calibration.
New Delhi can champion reform of the IMF and World Bank, stronger multilateral development financing, local-currency trade and interoperable payment infrastructure without allowing the agenda to become framed simply as a campaign against the dollar or Western financial institutions. That distinction is important for a country whose economic strategy depends simultaneously on BRICS cooperation, Western investment and technology, access to global capital markets and strategic autonomy.
The real test for BRICS will consequently come after the declarations. Building a common currency would require extraordinary political and monetary convergence that does not currently exist. Building interoperable payment corridors, establishing common technical standards, expanding local-currency financing and securing greater emerging-market representation in global institutions are narrower objectives—but potentially far more consequential.
For BRICS, the path to reshaping global finance may run not through a new currency, but through the less glamorous architecture of payments, settlement, liquidity and institutional governance.
