BRICS Eyes CBDC and Payment-System Links to Cut Costs
BRICS countries are discussing whether their fast-payment networks and central bank digital currencies can be linked across borders, with lower transaction costs as the immediate goal.
Key Takeaways
- BRICS wants cheaper cross-border settlement.
- Fast-payment rails may matter as much as CBDCs.
- Members are entering from very different starting points.
- Trade imbalances remain a harder problem to solve.
BRICS Is Looking for a Cheaper Way to Move Money
Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said on August 11 that BRICS members are discussing potential connections between their fast-payment systems and central bank digital currencies.
The talks remain at an early stage, with no agreed architecture or launch timetable. India is hosting the 2026 BRICS summit, and the RBI had already recommended earlier this year that CBDC interoperability be placed on the agenda.
For Malhotra, the immediate case is practical: cross-border payments are still expensive. Linking national systems could reduce the number of intermediaries involved in moving money between countries and make settlement faster for trade and tourism.
The RBI also wants greater use of local currencies in international transactions. If national payment systems can communicate directly, more bilateral trade could potentially be settled without routing every transaction through the same existing channels.
CBDCs Are Only One Part of the Payment Puzzle
India already shows why the discussion extends beyond central bank digital currencies.
Its digital rupee remains in an RBI pilot, while UPI already operates at enormous domestic scale. According to official NPCI data, the network processed about 23.66 billion transactions worth roughly $313B in July 2026.
The two systems can already overlap in practice. Digital-rupee wallets can scan UPI merchant QR codes, even though the underlying money and settlement process differ.
Brazil approaches the same cross-border problem from another direction. Its Pix instant-payment network handled nearly 80 billion transactions worth more than $6.83 trillion in 2025, and the central bank is now examining links between Pix and foreign instant-payment systems.
For BRICS, this broadens the technical challenge. Some members already have mature instant-payment rails that could potentially be connected internationally, while their CBDCs are developing on very different timelines.
BRICS Members Are Far Apart on CBDC Development
China is considerably further along with the digital yuan. As we previously covered, Beijing expanded the e-CNY network in April by authorizing 12 additional commercial banks, while its cross-border infrastructure was also moving further into international settlement. Official Chinese government data shows that by the end of November 2025, e-CNY had processed 3.48 billion cumulative transactions worth $2.47T.
Its design also changed in 2026. Digital-yuan balances held in authorized commercial-bank wallets can now earn interest and are treated as bank deposit liabilities covered by deposit insurance.
Russia is approaching a broader rollout. The Bank of Russia says major banks must begin offering digital-ruble services from September 1, 2026, with large qualifying retailers also required to accept it.
South Africa is taking a more cautious path. The South African Reserve Bank has said there is no compelling immediate need to launch a retail CBDC, preferring to focus on broader payment modernization while continuing to study wholesale applications.
China may therefore come to the table with a mature CBDC network, Brazil with Pix, India with UPI alongside an e-rupee pilot, Russia with an expanding digital ruble, and South Africa with a more cautious retail-CBDC stance.
Any common architecture would have to accommodate those differences rather than assume every member is building the same kind of digital-payment system.
BRICS Digital Payment & CBDC Landscape
Overview of national payment infrastructure and CBDC status across key members.
| Country | Instant Rails | CBDC Status |
|---|---|---|
| China | Extensive banking network | Advanced (e-CNY expanding; interest-bearing wallets) |
| India | UPI (Massive scale) | Active digital rupee pilot |
| Brazil | Pix (Near 80B txns) | Exploring foreign payment links |
| Russia | National networks | Expanding digital ruble rollout (Sept 2026) |
| South Africa | Modernizing systems | Cautious retail stance; focusing on wholesale |
Faster Settlement Doesn’t Fix Trade Imbalances
The proposal will inevitably be viewed through the wider debate over the dollar.
If an Indian importer and a Brazilian exporter can settle efficiently through linked national systems using rupees and reais, that transaction may have less need to pass through the dollar. Across enough trade corridors, local currencies could gradually play a larger role in settlement.
The RBI has previously stressed that its efforts to expand use of the rupee internationally are not presented as a formal de-dollarization campaign. The more immediate goal is to reduce costs and make local-currency settlement easier where it makes commercial sense.
Lower transaction costs also depend on more than the payment rail itself. A recent Bank of Italy experiment we examined found that the largest costs in cross-border stablecoin transfers often appeared when users entered or exited the digital-asset system rather than during the underlying transfer.
Uneven trade creates a separate problem. When the RBI first pushed the CBDC-linking idea earlier this year, Reuters reported that governance, technical standards, regulation and trade imbalances were among the hurdles officials expected to confront.
India and Russia have already encountered that issue. Greater local-currency trade left Russia accumulating rupee balances that were difficult to recycle efficiently. Making settlement faster does not change what happens when one side consistently receives more of another country’s currency than it can readily use.
Central banks would still need mechanisms for currency conversion, liquidity provision and persistent imbalances between trading partners.
The Hardest Part May Come After the Payment Is Sent
A workable BRICS system would need common rules for settlement finality, compliance, cybersecurity, privacy and access. It would also need answers for what happens after a payment clears: which currency is held, how excess balances are converted and who provides liquidity when trade flows are uneven.
Technical interoperability can shorten the route between payer and recipient. The economic and legal arrangements determine whether the network can function reliably once money begins moving at scale.
If BRICS can solve both sides, member countries would gain more practical options for settling trade directly in national currencies even though their domestic payment systems and digital-money projects look very different.
That is the real test behind the current discussions: not simply whether BRICS can connect payment rails and CBDCs, but whether it can make the settlement behind those connections work across countries with different technologies, regulations and trade relationships.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
