.svg)
In considering linking their central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the BRICS economies are seeking to redesign global financial plumbing to reflect the bloc’s growing weight in the world economy.
Members of BRICS are reportedly contemplating linking their CBDCs to facilitate cross-border payments and reduce reliance on the US dollar.
If the initiative succeeds, it could create alternative payment methods that will affect nearly half of global trade.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recommended to the government that a proposal to connect CBDCs be included on the agenda for the 2026 BRICS summit, to be held in New Delhi in August or September 2026, Reuters reported, citing several anonymous sources.
BRICS countries have been increasingly active in exploring and implementing CBDCs as part of broader efforts to modernise payment systems and strengthen financial cooperation within the bloc.
All five core members, China, India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa, are experimenting with digital fiat currencies, although they are at different stages of development.
China's e-CNY is the most advanced: it has been in pilot use for several years and is being tested for both retail and cross-border transactions, making it one of the most mature CBDC programs globally.
India's e-Rupee has been rolled out to millions of users with functionality for things like offline payments and programmable government transfers.
Russia is piloting a digital ruble and aims for broader implementation through 2026, partly driven by a strategic desire to circumvent restrictions from Western financial infrastructure.
Brazil's Drex is in the late testing phase with commercial banks ahead of an anticipated 2026 launch, and South Africa continues early trials of a digital rand as it navigates regulatory challenges.
From messages to money
If the initiative goes ahead, it could have a significant impact on the global financial system, according to observers.
“The proposal to interconnect CBCDs would represent a qualitative break in the architecture of global capital flows and would render business models based purely on the intermediation of financial messages obsolete,” said Miguel Enrique Stédile, a researcher with the Institute for Social Research in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
With linked digital currencies, settlement would be instantaneous, stripping the private sector of its ability to capture the surplus value generated by the transit time of money.
“The BRICS project aims to reduce circulation costs to favour production and real exchange in the Global South, while private companies would be displaced from the settlement infrastructure to the service layer, losing the political power to sanction or block financial flows,” Stédile added.
The primary shift will be the “compression” of the transaction chain, according to Mostafa Ahmed, senior researcher at the Al Habtor Research Center, an independent think tank based in Cairo, Egypt.
“Currently, private firms profit from the friction inherent in the correspondent banking model – specifically the time delays, the multiple hops between banks and the opacity of FX spreads,” Ahmed said.
“A BRICS-linked CBDC architecture, likely modelled on a bridge allowing atomic settlement (payment-versus-payment), effectively eliminates the need for these intermediate hops”.
For firms relying on messaging-based models such as the traditional SWIFT workflow, Ahmed continued, the value proposition erodes because the “message” and the “money” are no longer separate: the movement of the token is the settlement.
“Consequently, we expect private payment firms to migrate from being settlement agents to becoming connection aggregators. Their role will shift from moving funds to managing the complexity of connecting disparate domestic systems to this new, faster rail,” Ahmed explained.
If implemented, the project would challenge the traditional correspondent banking-based payment models, said Dmitry Dolgin, Chief Economist with ING, the third-largest bank in Germany.
With this project, BRICS members such as India are exploring ways to reduce trade transaction costs, given the limited convertibility of the rupee and a desire to lower dependence on the US dollar and US-centric payment systems.
“The key advantage of wholesale CBDCs lies in their ability to facilitate direct clearing between currencies, eliminating the need for dollar intermediation,” Dolgin said.
Intermediaries face disintermediation
Although the framework of interconnected CBDCs poses the risk of disintermediating existing payment service providers (PSPs), it could create opportunities for companies that position themselves as providers of infrastructure, compliance or value-added services.
The destruction of the existing model opens avenues for companies that can migrate from extracting rent through friction to providing services through efficiency, Stédile told Vixio.
“Opportunities will arise for firms that develop the technological bridges – APIs and protocols that connect local digital wallets to the BRICS international framework, such as parametric insurance for international trade, supply chain financing via smart contracts and automated liquidity management for exporting companies," he said.
In general, this means that “transaction rent” dies so that the “efficiency of circulation” can flourish, accelerating the turnover of productive capital among nations of the Global South, Stédile added.
According to Ahmed, significant opportunities are emerging at the edges of the network.
In particular, he pointed out the “last mile” problem. “CBDCs are wholesale instruments. Private firms are essential to bridge the gap between these central bank rails and the commercial bank accounts or digital wallets of end-users – SMEs and consumers,” he said.
By incorporating these payments into smart contracts, such as automating trade finance release conditions or supply chain triggers, private players can create new value that central banks cannot directly provide.
Finally, there is a liquidity provision issue. “Even with atomic settlement, FX markets need liquidity. Sophisticated firms will pivot to becoming automated market makers within these CBDC bridges, earning spreads by providing the liquidity pools necessary for instant currency swaps,” Ahmed added.
Politics over technology
Payment firms will need to make operational, technological and compliance adjustments to integrate with the BRICS-linked CBDC system, but fragmented regulatory approaches across participating countries may complicate that process.
Technologically, firms must move from batch-processing legacy systems to 24/7, API-first architectures capable of handling atomic settlement.
“Operationally, the biggest hurdle is the ‘compliance bridge”, Ahmed told Vixio, explaining that the BRICS bloc is regulatorily diverse – whereas China has strict capital controls, the UAE is an open financial hub.
“A unified CBDC bridge does not erase these legal borders. Therefore, private payment firms will need to build sophisticated regulatory stacks that can instantly verify if a transaction complies with both the sender’s and receiver’s local capital controls and AML rules.”
Technological integration is feasible, but the success of the BRICS CBDC system would depend on the bloc's ability to create a higher level of political coordination that harmonizes national legislation, Stédile said.
“The lack of a single clearinghouse or a common financial code among BRICS countries could lead to digital protectionist barriers, where one country does not recognize the legal validity of a smart contract issued by another,” he added.
“Without this, we risk replacing dollar dependence with an archipelago of isolated digital currencies, where the compliance cost for private companies will remain high, benefiting only large state players or technological oligopolies that can bear such bureaucratic complexity”.
Nevertheless, even incremental progress would mark a shift in the global payments balance. As BRICS economies search for cheaper, faster and more sovereign ways to settle trade, the push to interlink digital currencies signals a broader ambition: to redesign financial plumbing in a way that reflects the bloc’s growing weight in the world economy.
