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The emerging BRICS payments agenda is not a single switch that instantly replaces SWIFT or the IMF. It is a growing set of financial infrastructure ideas designed to make cross-border settlement faster, cheaper, more resilient, and less dependent on the dollar-centred correspondent banking system.
For businesses, banks, and policymakers, the real story is less dramatic than ‘SWIFT is finished’ but more important than ‘nothing will change’.
At the centre of the debate is the proposed BRICS interbank payment system, a phrase often used to describe BRICS efforts around local-currency settlement, payment connectivity, digital finance, and alternative clearing arrangements. The practical question is whether these tools can reduce friction in trade among BRICS members without fragmenting global finance.
What Is the BRICS Interbank Payment System?
The BRICS interbank payment system is best understood as an emerging network of proposals and payment initiatives rather than one fully operational global replacement for SWIFT. The 2024 Kazan Declaration encouraged stronger correspondent banking networks within BRICS, local-currency settlement, and further discussion under the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, described as voluntary and non-binding. It also supported feasibility work on independent settlement and depository infrastructure, including BRICS Clear.
That distinction matters. SWIFT is a mature global messaging cooperative used by banks and financial institutions to communicate securely about cross-border transactions; it does not itself move money. SWIFT says it connects more than 11,500 institutions across more than 200 countries and territories, with millions of messages sent daily.
So the BRICS challenge is not simply ‘new app versus old network’. It is a broader attempt to build optional settlement pathways that could sit alongside existing banks, central bank systems, domestic payment schemes, and foreign exchange markets.
Why BRICS Wants New Payment Rails
The BRICS agenda reflects a mix of economics, politics, and operational necessity. Cross-border payments can still be slow, expensive, opaque, and dependent on multiple intermediaries, especially when transactions involve emerging markets, thin currency corridors, or compliance-sensitive counterparties.
The Financial Stability Board’s G20 cross-border payments work has also emphasised the global need for faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more inclusive cross-border payments.
For BRICS members, the motivation goes further. More local-currency settlement could reduce exposure to dollar liquidity cycles, lower conversion costs in some trade corridors, and support trade that does not naturally require a dollar leg. It could also give participating countries more redundancy if geopolitical tensions, sanctions, or correspondent banking withdrawals disrupt traditional channels.
The expanded BRICS bloc adds urgency to this discussion. BRICS now includes eleven countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, according to BRICS sources and recent government statements.
More members mean more potential trade corridors, but also more regulatory complexity, more currencies, and more political differences to manage.
The Building Blocks Behind the BRICS Payment System
A credible BRICS payment system would need more than a political declaration. It would require trusted messaging, settlement assets, liquidity, compliance controls, dispute processes, cyber resilience, and clear legal responsibilities.
The most realistic version is likely to be modular, with several pieces developing at different speeds.
Key components to watch include:
- Local-Currency Settlement: Importers and exporters settle in national currencies where possible, reducing automatic dependence on the dollar or euro.
- Correspondent Banking Links: BRICS banks strengthen direct relationships so fewer transactions need to route through third-country banks.
- Digital Settlement Platforms: Central banks and commercial banks test whether tokenised deposits, wholesale CBDCs, or other digital assets can shorten settlement time.
- BRICS Pay-Style Connectivity: Payment interfaces could help connect national and commercial payment methods across member countries, though public descriptions remain broader than a single proven global system.
- BRICS Clear and Market Infrastructure: Feasibility work could eventually support securities settlement and depository services outside dominant Western infrastructure.
Project mBridge shows why central banks are interested in this direction. The BIS said in 2024 that mBridge had reached a minimum viable product stage, with a wholesale CBDC platform designed to support cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions among participating central banks.
Even if BRICS develops its own path, mBridge illustrates the technical direction: fewer intermediaries, near-real-time settlement, and multi-currency functionality.
How It Challenges SWIFT Dominance
The challenge to SWIFT is not that BRICS can instantly copy its global reach. SWIFT’s advantage is network scale, standardisation, trust, compliance integration, and deep bank adoption. It is also modernising through ISO 20022 and faster cross-border payment services, meaning the incumbent is not standing still.
The challenge is subtler: BRICS can reduce the assumption that every important cross-border transaction must rely on the same Western-centred messaging and settlement ecosystem.
If enough trade among BRICS members can be invoiced, financed, messaged, and settled through alternative channels, SWIFT remains important but less exclusive.
This creates three forms of pressure:
- Pricing Pressure: Alternative routes can push incumbent banks and networks to lower fees or improve transparency.
- Resilience Pressure: Countries and companies may demand backup rails so one network outage, sanction, or correspondent relationship does not stop trade.
- Standards Pressure: New systems can compete on richer data, faster confirmation, and interoperability with domestic instant payment systems.
Still, replacing SWIFT is far harder than criticising it. Banks choose infrastructure based on reliability, legal certainty, counterparties, liquidity, and regulatory acceptance. A new BRICS rail has to win trust transaction by transaction.
Is This Really an IMF Alternative?
Not directly. The IMF provides macroeconomic surveillance, policy advice, technical assistance, and balance-of-payments lending to member countries; it is not a payment messaging network.
The IMF describes itself as supporting financial stability and monetary cooperation among 191 member countries, including through crisis lending.
BRICS financial architecture already has institutions closer to an IMF or World Bank comparison. The New Development Bank was created to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries, while the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement is designed to provide support during actual or potential balance-of-payments pressure.
The payment initiative plays a different role. It is infrastructure, not a rescue lender. It may complement BRICS development finance by making settlement easier, but it does not replace the IMF’s surveillance function, conditional lending framework, or near-global membership.
The BRICS Currency Exchange Question
The BRICS currency exchange debate is often confused with talk of a single BRICS currency. A shared BRICS currency would require deep monetary coordination, compatible inflation frameworks, fiscal trust, capital mobility, and political agreement among economies with very different structures.
That is a much heavier lift than building better local-currency payment channels.
A more plausible near-term model is multi-currency settlement. In this model, a Brazilian exporter, Indian importer, Emirati bank, or Chinese supplier could use more direct currency corridors when commercial conditions make sense. Foreign exchange would still matter, but the transaction would not automatically need to pass through the dollar for every leg.
This is where liquidity becomes the central issue. The dollar remains deeply embedded in global FX markets. BIS data for April 2025 showed the US dollar on one side of 89.2% of global foreign exchange trades. IMF research also found that SWIFT cross-border payments remained dominated by US dollar and euro transactions during 2021–2024, with the renminbi growing from a low base.
In plain English, BRICS can encourage more local-currency exchange, but liquidity cannot be declared into existence. Companies will use new routes when pricing, settlement speed, convertibility, hedging, and legal certainty are better than the familiar route.
Benefits for Trade and Financial Resilience
If executed well, the BRICS interbank payment system could offer practical benefits for trade-heavy businesses and banks operating across emerging markets. The strongest case is not ideological; it is operational.
Potential benefits include:
- Lower Friction in Regional Trade: Direct payment channels can reduce the number of intermediaries in selected corridors.
- More Settlement Choice: Businesses may gain alternatives when correspondent banking routes are expensive or unavailable.
- Better Bargaining Power: Competing rails can encourage incumbents to improve speed, transparency, and service quality.
- Local-Currency Growth: More invoicing and settlement in national currencies could support domestic financial markets over time.
- Strategic Redundancy: Governments and banks may value backup infrastructure in a more fragmented geopolitical environment.
For small and midsize exporters, the immediate benefit would not be abstract ‘de-dollarisation’. It would be simpler reconciliation, clearer payment status, fewer surprise deductions, and better predictability in receiving funds. Those are the everyday problems that decide whether a new system gains users.
The Risks of Fragmentation and Distrust
The same features that make BRICS payment infrastructure attractive to some countries make others cautious. If alternative systems are perceived mainly as sanctions-evasion tools, they may face stronger scrutiny from Western regulators, banks, and compliance teams.
That could limit adoption by global companies that cannot afford secondary sanctions risk or reputational exposure.
There are also internal BRICS challenges. Members have different exchange-rate regimes, capital controls, banking rules, inflation histories, digital currency strategies, and geopolitical priorities.
Building a trusted settlement layer across such diversity requires essential but less visible work: legal agreements, dispute resolution, cybersecurity standards, liquidity backstops, and anti-money-laundering controls.
Fragmentation can also raise costs. If banks must maintain parallel systems for SWIFT, domestic networks, Chinese payment rails, regional instant payment links, and BRICS channels, the compliance and technology burden may increase before it decreases.
What Businesses and Banks Should Watch Next
The smartest response is neither panic nor dismissal. A BRICS payment system could become important in specific corridors long before it becomes global. Decision-makers should track practical adoption rather than slogans.
A useful monitoring checklist includes:
- Which central banks formally participate in payment pilots?
- Which commercial banks can send and receive real transactions?
- Are transactions settled in central bank money, commercial bank money, CBDCs, or tokenised assets?
- Which currencies have reliable liquidity and hedging tools?
- Are compliance rules compatible with US, EU, UN, and local sanctions obligations?
- Do exporters receive faster settlement, lower total cost, and better payment visibility?
- Are dispute, refund, and failed-payment processes clearly documented?
For treasurers, the practical move is to map exposure. Identify trade corridors where payment delays, FX spreads, or correspondent banking issues are already costly. Those are the corridors where BRICS alternatives may become commercially relevant first.
A Gradual Shift, Not an Overnight Break
The BRICS payments push is best seen as part of a larger move towards financial multipolarity. SWIFT is still deeply entrenched, the dollar remains highly liquid, and the IMF continues to occupy a distinct role in global financial stability.
But BRICS members are clearly trying to create more options, especially for trade among emerging economies.
The outcome will depend on execution. If the system delivers trusted, compliant, liquid, and user-friendly settlement, it can reshape selected payment corridors. If it remains mostly political branding, SWIFT dominance will continue with only marginal disruption.
The likely future is not one winner replacing every other network. It is a messier landscape where SWIFT, domestic instant payment systems, CBDC platforms, local-currency arrangements, and the BRICS payment system coexist.
For global finance, that may be less like a revolution and more like a slow rewiring of the pipes beneath international trade.
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