BRICS and the future of cross-border payments

Source: The Hindu Business Line | Original Published At: 2026-09-16 15:47:22 UTC

Key Points

• BRICS has pursued local-currency and cross-border payment work since the Ufa declaration of 2015, including a Payment Task Force of BRICS central banks established in 2020.
• The Kazan 2024 summit named the effort the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, and Rio 2025 received the task force’s first technical report.
• The New Delhi Declaration supports interoperability of payment and messaging channels and encourages more trade settlement in local currencies, while stating that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
• The article notes that there is no BRICS payment system, no common settlement currency and no timeline, and that Russia’s proposed settlement and depositary infrastructure was recorded as the subject of a technical workshop rather than a decision.
• Intra-BRICS exports reached $1.17 trillion in 2024, and India’s trade with BRICS members crossed $417 billion in FY26, increasing attention to payment friction and settlement speed.
• BRICS finance meetings advanced adjacent initiatives, including the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees pilot, a study on invoice discounting for MSME exporters, and expanded local-currency lending by the New Development Bank.
• Progress is expected through bilateral fast-payment links such as UPI-Aani and QRIS-UPI, local-currency settlement supported by central-bank investment rules, and common standards for messaging, QR interoperability, data and dispute resolution.