De-dollarisation: BRICS takes a measured route, focuses on payments and not on common currency
The BRICS summit outcome document contains no mention of a common BRICS currency or a formal call to replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Instead, the language continues the incremental, technocratic approach used since the Rio and Kazan summits: interoperable payment systems, local-currency settlement in bilateral trade, and voluntary cooperation that "respects national priorities."
Work continued on linking national payment platforms — including India's UPI, China's CIPS, Brazil's Pix, and Russia's SPFS — to allow direct settlement in local currencies without routing through dollar-based correspondent banking.
The measured approach reflects continued caution among member states, including India, about being seen to challenge the dollar's reserve-currency status outright.
De-dollarisation vs. a Common Currency — Distinguishing the Concepts
"De-dollarisation" refers to reducing reliance on the US dollar for invoicing trade, settling payments, and holding reserves — it does not require a single shared currency. A "common currency" (monetary union) would require member states to cede independent monetary policy, as in the Eurozone. BRICS members, given widely differing economic sizes, capital-account regimes, and monetary sovereignty concerns, have consistently favoured the former (payments cooperation) over the latter.
Key Details
- India has publicly stated it does not support introducing a common BRICS currency; the Reserve Bank of India maintains the rupee as only partially, not fully, convertible on the capital account
- Local-currency settlement mechanisms have been discussed at BRICS since the 2023 Johannesburg and 2024 Kazan summits without adopting a common currency
- A monetary union requires harmonised fiscal and monetary policy (as in the EU's Economic and Monetary Union) — a step BRICS members have not pursued given divergent economic structures
The summit outcome explicitly sticks to payments cooperation rather than currency union, confirming the trajectory set at Rio (2025) and Kazan (2024) rather than a new escalation toward challenging dollar dominance.
BRICS Pay and Payment-System Interoperability
BRICS Pay is the umbrella term for efforts to link members' domestic instant-payment and messaging systems — India's UPI, China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), Brazil's Pix, and Russia's System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) — so that a payment initiated in one member country can settle in another using local currencies, bypassing SWIFT and dollar-correspondent banking chains.
Key Details
- UPI (India) is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a not-for-profit entity under the RBI/IBA umbrella
- CIPS (China) and SPFS (Russia) were built partly as alternatives to SWIFT following the imposition of Western financial sanctions on Russia after 2022
- Interoperability efforts intensified around the 2026 New Delhi summit, focused on bilateral and plurilateral payment-corridor linkages rather than a single unified BRICS payment network
The article's central point — a "measured route" — is embodied precisely in BRICS Pay: it plumbs payment rails together without needing any new currency or monetary authority.
New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA)
The NDB and CRA are BRICS' own multilateral financial institutions, created as alternatives to the dollar-dominated Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank) for development financing and balance-of-payments support respectively.
Key Details
- NDB: established by the Fortaleza Declaration (6th BRICS Summit, 2014); operational from July 2015; headquartered in Shanghai; authorised capital of $100 billion; first president was India's K.V. Kamath
- CRA: a $100 billion mutual currency-swap arrangement, also agreed at Fortaleza in 2014, to help members facing balance-of-payments pressure
- Both instruments predate the current de-dollarisation debate and represent BRICS' longer-standing effort to build parallel financial infrastructure
The NDB and CRA show that BRICS' de-dollarisation efforts are not new — they extend a decade-old strategy of building alternative financial plumbing rather than displacing the dollar through a new currency.
- NDB founded: Fortaleza Declaration, 2014; operational 2015; HQ Shanghai; authorised capital $100 billion
- CRA: $100 billion currency-swap pool, agreed 2014
- BRICS Pay links: India's UPI, China's CIPS, Brazil's Pix, Russia's SPFS
- No common BRICS currency proposed or adopted as of the 2026 New Delhi summit
- Prior summits referenced for continuity of approach: Kazan (2024, Russia), Rio de Janeiro (2025, Brazil)