Professor Satya Narayan Misra* in Bhubaneswar, September 9, 2026: The official theme of the upcoming BRICS Summit hosted by India on 12th& 13th September is building ‘Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Innovation’ to strengthen social, economic and institutional capacities to handle geopolitical conflicts, advancing digital public infrastructure, fin tech and AI, deepening multilateral ties and focussing on green financing.

Beyond these overarching objectives, the member nations are looking for bolstering Intra Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRIC) trade, improve supply chain resilience and explore a mechanism for robust cross border payment mechanism and bypass the Western dominated Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) messaging system and US dollar based correspondent banking system. Since the banks of countries of BRICS do not hold accounts with each other, the payment is routed through larger international banks, called correspondent banks, typically headquartered in New York, or London that deals with both countries. SWIFT is a messaging network that enables institutions to exchange payment instructions through it.

The BRICS Bridge

Instead of payments moving through several correspondent banks with dollar conversions involving FE margins varying between 2.5% to 8.5% , countries like China and India are exploring mechanism for linking digital payment systems and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to pre-empt multiple routing between currencies and minimize cost; creating a BRICS Bridge. It is a proposed multilateral digital platform to facilitate cross border transactions using national currencies and digital assets among BRICS member nations. This will cut out the US dollar, leverages distributed ledger technology and CBDCs for secure, real time and low cost execution.

However, the approach to achieve it differs. China and Russia view the CBDC framework as a tool for aggressive de dollarization &evading sanctions. On the other hand, India frames the initiative strictly as a mechanism to achieve operational efficiency and reduce transaction cost. India has built interoperable bilateral linking with Singapore before diving in to massive multinational pools.

India is a founding member of NEXUS Project – a multilateral international initiative to enable instant cross-border retail payments by interconnecting domestic Fast Payment Systems (FPS), and remittances between India and Singapore are linked by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India with Singapore’s Pay Nowsystems. It appears that the RBI is recommending a NEXUS like network for BRICs as a parallel system.

Project mBridge was the result of extensive collaboration starting in 2021 between the BIS innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, Central Bank of UAE, People’s Bank of China and Hong Kong Monetary authority to which Saudi Central Bank joined in 2024. It has allowed partcipating nations to settle trade using local currencies rather than through the US dollar or Western messaging infrastructure like SWIFT.

On the other hand, BIS and Institute of International Finance have come up with Project Agora in 2026 which is a western-backed counterpart to project m Bridge. The Project brings together over 40 global commercial financial giants along with eight major central banks.

The Choice of Cross Border Payment Mechanism

Choosing between the various options is less about technical specifications and more about navigating a deeply divided global financial architecture. The choice depends entirely on a country’s geopolitical alignment, currency strategy (de dollarization vs status quo and whether they are prioritising retail remittances or wholesale institutional settlement. If a country faces heavy western sanctions, m-Bridge is the primary path forward.

This means integrating deeply in to China financial sphere, as the platform heavily relies on Chinese infrastructure and the digital yuan. For nations securely integrated in to Western financial systems, Project Agora is the future of institutional banking. It bridges advance block chain technology with trusted institutions like SWIFT and G 7 banks. If the immediate goal is to make cross border payments, Project Nexus is the most pragmatic choice.

Strengthening New Development Bank

The New Development Bank was set up in 2014 to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS countries. Its key objectives are to finance projects such as clean energy, transport, water and sanitation and digital networks, promote environmentally and socially sustainable growth and offer a complementary financial institution to western dominated bodies like the World Bank and promote local currency lending to reduce reliance on the US dollar. With authorised capital of $100 billion and subscribed capital of $50 B, India has been the beneficiary of 32 projects for $9.5 billion, which includes projects like Delhi- Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS & Lucknow Metro.

Despite its strategic goal to de dollarize and transit to local –currency financing, a majority of the NDB’s funding and bond issuances have relied on hard currencies like dollar. Accelerating local currency lending (30% target) requires overcoming deeply entrenched global financial structures. NDB’s capital resources are significantly smaller than the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank.

This limits its ability to fully bridge the trillions of dollars needed annually for global infrastructure. The loans from NDB do not attract the kind of conditionality imposed by IMF to introduce market and structural reforms. However, there are concerns over its slow loan disbursements and transparency and labour standards compared to western multi-lateral development banks.

The Push for De dollarization

When Euro was introduced in 1999, one of the ostensible objectives was to challenge the supremacy of dollar. However, 26 years later, it plays second dollar, with dollar dominating global trade invoicing and SWIFT transactions at over 80% usage, while the Euro stays primarily regional. USA financial markets are much larger and deeper. US treasures total around$30Trillion, while German bonds total only about2 trillion Euro.

However, China has emerged as a major global manufacturer and export hub; it has been at the forefront of the campaign for de dollarization. Entry of China in to WTO in 2001 has been a watershed moment for in terms of global trade where its share has increased considerably (15%). Its share in global GDP is 17%, same as EU countries; with USA leading with a 25% share. USA trade deficit of $202 billion vis a vis China has been the trigger for Trump in its tariff tantrums.

China clearly sniffs an opportunity to bust the dominance of US financial markets through de-dollarization. President Trump in November 2024 threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRIC countries if they moved away from dollar. Even though the threats were not targeted at payment systems, the challenge for BRICS countries lies in navigating the complex financial complex.

De-dollarization looks unlikely. India’s cautious approach in focussing on cutting on transaction costs, reshaping global governance to be non-western rather than anti –western and acting as a bridge builder rather than pursuing dedollarization seems to be a step in the right direction.

• Prof Misra teaches International Financial Management