BRICS nations eye cross-border payments, local currency trade and investment

“Pragmatic” and “efficient” solutions to make payments across borders are being discussed by the BRICS nations, with a joint statement issued by the finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the bloc also calling for the promotion of their local currencies to settle trade and make investments.

Separately, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal also called on the BRICS member and partner countries to link payment systems and trade in each other’s currencies. Speaking at the opening session of BRICS Business Forum, Goyal noted there is “immense potential to deepen cooperation” and that trade amongst partners should be deep and resilient with diversified supply chains.

He added that trade should not be an impediment to growth and the well-being of each member state. “We encourage the BPTF to continue discussions, building on the ongoing work, to facilitate practical solutions for cross-border payments among BRICS countries, which are fast, low-cost, more accessible, efficient, transparent, and safe,” the statement added.

The BPTF refers to the BRICS Payment Task Force. The joint statement has been issued after the finance ministers and central bank governors of the BRICS countries met in Jaipur on August 12-13 and in Mumbai on Thursday. The comments come after Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in August that BRICS members are discussing linking their fast payment systems and Central ​Bank Digital Currencies.

Malhotra had said there is a lot of scope to reduce costs in making international payments. The focus on pushing local currencies and coming together to link retail payment systems – UPI is used around 10 countries – comes amid protracted talks between India and the US over their trade deal.

This has also attracted the ire of the US, with President Donald Trump having threatened to impose 10% and even 100% additional tariff on the members of the bloc. Trump views the grouping of the major emerging market economies as having been set up to “degenerate” and “destroy” the dollar “so that another country can take over and be the standard”.

“…if we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war. We would not be the same country any longer. We are not going to let that happen… The dollar is king. We are going to keep it that way,” Trump had said in July last year.

BRICS countries, meanwhile, have repeated on several occasions that they are not trying to replace the US dollar as a medium of exchange and only want to offer a “viable alternative that will aid the market in its perpetual mission for efficiency” and foster greater prosperity, promoting universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation.

The US dollar is the most dominant currency in the world for payment, trade, and investment. As such, central banks around the world hold much of their foreign exchange reserves in assets denominated in the US currency. However, diversification towards other assets such as gold gathered steam in the wake of Ukraine being invaded in early 2022 and the US freezing Russia’s dollar assets.

In mid-2022, the RBI announced a framework to settle trade in the rupee. As per latest available data, 8.14% of India’s imports – amounting to Rs 1.58 lakh crore – were settled in rupees in the first three months of 2026-27.

This is more than six times the Rs 25,402 crore of imports settled in rupees in April-June 2025. According to experts, the sharp jump in the use of rupees to pay for India’s imports has been to settle purchases of Russian oil.

Other BRICS nations also have been pushing their own currencies, such as China and the yuan. But critics have pointed at the minute share of the yuan in global payments. Data from Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) – the dominant messaging network which is used to initiate international payments – shows the yuan had a share of only 3.1% in global payments in July.

The US, on the other hand, was on top with 50.99% of the share. Other metrics put the dollar’s share in global forex volumes north of 80%. According to Zhang Ming, Deputy Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Deputy Director of the National Institution for Finance and Development, China is pursuing a different model to internationalise the yuan.

Writing in a column in June, Ming said the world’s second largest economy is supplying its currency to the rest of the world through financial account outflows, while allowing it to return to the country through current account surpluses.

Siddharth Upasani is a Deputy Associate Editor with The Indian Express. He reports primarily on data and the economy, looking for trends and changes in the former which paint a picture of the latter. Before The Indian Express, he worked at Moneycontrol and financial newswire Informist (previously called Cogencis).

Outside of work, sports, fantasy football, and graphic novels keep him busy. ... Read More