An Oblong Media Global Intelligence Investigative Observation.
As BRICS prepares for its forthcoming summit in New Delhi, one of the most consequential developments surrounding the bloc is receiving considerably less attention than the recurring debate about a hypothetical “BRICS currency.”
The more important story may be happening beneath that headline.
BRICS countries are increasingly examining how their existing payment networks, national currencies and emerging central bank digital currencies can communicate directly across borders.
If successfully implemented, such interoperability could gradually reduce the need for transactions between BRICS economies to pass through dollar denominated channels or Western controlled financial infrastructure.
This would not amount to the sudden overthrow of the dollar.
It could, however, represent something potentially more durable: the construction of alternative financial plumbing.
FROM POLITICAL RHETORIC TO PAYMENT INFRASTRUCTURE
Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra has confirmed that BRICS members are discussing possible connections between instant payment platforms and central bank digital currencies.
The distinction is important.
For years, BRICS declarations have promoted greater settlement of trade in national currencies. But declarations alone cannot significantly alter the international monetary system. Countries require clearing arrangements, payment networks, liquidity mechanisms, currency conversion facilities and trusted settlement infrastructure.
That is where the present discussions become strategically interesting.
India already possesses the Unified Payments Interface, one of the world’s largest real time payment ecosystems. Brazil has Pix, a highly successful public instant payment network that has transformed domestic payments since its introduction in 2020.
Rather than creating an entirely new financial system from scratch, BRICS could attempt to make successful national systems interoperable.
A Brazilian importer buying Indian machinery, for example, could theoretically settle through connected national payment infrastructure rather than routing every stage of the transaction through the traditional correspondent banking architecture.
Multiply such arrangements across China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and the expanding BRICS membership and something significant begins to emerge.
Not necessarily a new global currency.
A new global payments network.
IRAN’S PROPOSAL REVEALS THE STRATEGIC DIRECTION
Iran has gone further by advocating a dedicated BRICS financial corridor connecting national payment systems.
The attraction is obvious.
Faster settlements.
Lower transaction costs.
Greater use of national currencies.
Reduced dependence on external intermediaries.
And, perhaps most importantly, greater insulation from financial sanctions.
Iran and Russia understand this vulnerability better than most BRICS members because both have experienced extensive Western financial restrictions.
The exclusion of major Russian banks from SWIFT following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated something governments across the Global South had already understood intellectually but perhaps had not fully appreciated strategically:
Financial infrastructure is not politically neutral.
Access can become an instrument of state power.
Once that reality is accepted, building alternative infrastructure becomes less an ideological exercise than an insurance policy.
WHY WASHINGTON SHOULD BE WATCHING
America’s greatest international financial advantage is not simply that the dollar is valuable.
It is that enormous portions of global commerce operate through an ecosystem in which the dollar occupies the central position.
Trade invoicing, commodity pricing, international banking, reserve accumulation and global capital markets reinforce one another.
That architecture gives Washington extraordinary financial reach.
Countries requiring dollars frequently interact directly or indirectly with institutions exposed to American jurisdiction. This significantly enhances the effectiveness of US sanctions.
Consequently, the strategic importance of BRICS payment integration should not be measured solely by whether countries stop holding dollars.
The more relevant question is:
How much international trade can eventually occur without touching the dollar centred financial system at all?
That is a very different proposition.
Brazil’s Pix illustrates why Washington and Western financial institutions are paying attention to alternative payment systems.
Pix demonstrates that inexpensive, state supported digital payment infrastructure can achieve extraordinary penetration while reducing dependence on traditional private payment intermediaries.
If comparable systems become internationally interoperable, the implications extend far beyond convenience.
They begin touching the economics, and eventually the geopolitics, of global payments.
THE $40 TRILLION AMERICAN DEBT QUESTION
The discussion also arrives at an uncomfortable moment for the United States.
US federal debt has crossed the $40 trillion threshold.
This does not mean America is suddenly bankrupt, nor does the headline debt number by itself imply an imminent collapse of the dollar. The United States remains supported by enormous productive capacity, deep capital markets, powerful institutions and the world’s dominant reserve currency.
But persistent debt accumulation matters.
The dollar’s international role allows the United States privileges unavailable to ordinary economies. Global demand for dollar denominated assets helps America finance deficits on terms that would be considerably more difficult for countries whose currencies are not internationally dominant.
This creates an old contradiction associated with the Triffin dilemma: supplying the world with sufficient reserve assets can require persistent external imbalances by the country issuing the dominant reserve currency.
For BRICS governments, therefore, diversification is increasingly rational.
They do not have to destroy the dollar.
They merely need alternatives.
DE DOLLARISATION IS PROBABLY THE WRONG DESCRIPTION
Much of the debate has been framed dramatically as a coming BRICS assault on the dollar.
That interpretation risks misunderstanding what is actually occurring.
India in particular has generally approached the issue pragmatically rather than ideologically. New Delhi maintains substantial economic relationships with the United States and Europe and has little incentive to participate in an unnecessarily confrontational monetary project.
The emerging strategy therefore appears more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Build national payment systems.
Connect selected systems bilaterally.
Increase local-currency settlement.
Experiment with CBDCs.
Develop clearing mechanisms.
Reduce unnecessary intermediaries.
Then gradually expand interoperability.
This approach may ultimately prove more effective than announcing a politically dramatic BRICS currency that participating governments may not presently be prepared to support.
Creating a genuine multinational currency requires difficult agreements concerning monetary policy, fiscal discipline, exchange rate management, reserves, governance and ultimately sovereignty.
Connecting payment systems requires considerably less political integration.
That makes it achievable.
THE SWIFT LESSON
Russia’s partial exclusion from SWIFT following its invasion of Ukraine became a powerful demonstration of Western financial leverage.
Whatever one’s position on the justification for those sanctions, governments elsewhere inevitably observed the precedent.
The lesson was straightforward: excessive dependence on financial infrastructure controlled outside one’s jurisdiction creates strategic vulnerability.
This helps explain why countries that have no intention of politically aligning themselves with Moscow may nevertheless support alternative settlement mechanisms.
It should also be noted that comparisons between sanctions imposed on Russia and the absence of equivalent measures against other states, including Israel over Gaza, remain politically contested. Different governments apply sanctions according to their own legal frameworks, alliances and strategic interests.
That inconsistency itself reinforces the central BRICS argument.
International financial infrastructure can become entangled with geopolitics.
Countries seeking strategic autonomy will therefore naturally attempt to diversify their exposure.
THIS IS ABOUT MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
The most significant consequence of BRICS Pay, interconnected CBDCs or linked national payment networks would not necessarily be the immediate decline of the dollar.
It would be increased optionality.
For decades, much of international commerce has effectively travelled along financial highways constructed, operated or heavily influenced by Western institutions.
BRICS is beginning to construct alternative roads.
Traffic will not suddenly abandon the existing highways.
But once credible alternatives exist, countries acquire bargaining power.
And financial systems are ultimately strengthened by network effects. The more countries, banks and businesses using an alternative settlement architecture, the more valuable that architecture becomes.
This is why apparently technical discussions between central bankers deserve geopolitical attention.
THE REAL TEST IN NEW DELHI
The forthcoming New Delhi summit should therefore be judged less by dramatic declarations about replacing the dollar and more by several practical questions.
Will BRICS governments agree on technical standards for connecting payment systems?
Can local currency transactions be settled efficiently across jurisdictions?
Can CBDCs eventually operate across compatible platforms?
Can participating central banks develop credible clearing and liquidity mechanisms?
Can these arrangements function without imposing excessive currency risk on businesses?
And perhaps most importantly, can BRICS construct a financial architecture trusted by countries with very different political systems, economic priorities and strategic alliances?
Those are much harder questions than announcing de, dollarisation.
They are also much more consequential.
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT
The dollar is not about to disappear.
The United States still possesses enormous structural advantages: exceptionally deep financial markets, the world’s largest pool of highly liquid government securities, institutional credibility, military power, technological dominance and decades of accumulated trust in dollar based commerce.
BRICS currently possesses no single currency capable of replicating all those characteristics.
But that may be precisely why obsessing over a “BRICS currency” misses the point.
The emerging challenge to dollar dominance may not arrive as one dramatic replacement currency.
It may arrive as thousands of transactions that simply no longer require the dollar.
A Brazilian company paying an Indian supplier directly.
A Chinese importer settling with a Gulf exporter in local currencies.
Central banks exchanging digital currencies through interoperable infrastructure.
Regional payment networks connecting without passing through Western intermediaries.
None of these transactions individually threatens the dollar.
Collectively, over many years, they could gradually reduce the proportion of international commerce dependent upon it.
That is how monetary systems often change, not through dramatic declarations, but through the slow accumulation of alternatives.
BRICS therefore does not need to defeat the dollar.
It only needs to make the dollar increasingly optional.
And if the New Delhi summit succeeds in moving interconnected payment systems, CBDCs and local currency settlement from diplomatic language towards functioning infrastructure, history may eventually remember these seemingly technical discussions as an important stage in the transition towards a more multipolar international financial system.
© 2026 Oblong Media Global Intelligence
Independent Analysis Geopolitics
Economics
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