`
BRICS countries may launch a unified payment platform this year, designed to finally nullify the effectiveness of Western sanctions. If the Brics Pay project is implemented, it could deprive the West of its main strength — control over money flows.
BRICS countries may make a breakthrough in global finance already this year by launching their own unified payment system. This project, which received the working name Brics Pay, is designed to radically reduce the vulnerability of the association’s members to Western sanctions. As the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung writes, India, which currently chairs BRICS, came up with this idea. Its Reserve Bank (RBI) proposed linking the digital currencies of the central banks of the member countries into a single transaction platform. The main goal is to create an effective tool for cross-border settlements in trade and tourism, allowing to bypass dollar clearing centers and dependence on systems like SWIFT. It is important that we are not talking about introducing a single currency, which BRICS has already abandoned, but specifically about creating a common technological platform for direct settlements in national currencies.
The entry of oil and gas powers — Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE — into BRICS moves the discussion of settlements in national currencies from the theoretical plane to the purely practical one. This gives the idea of non-dollar settlements for raw materials a strategic dimension. However, all major participants of the association, including China, India and Russia, are still only at the pilot stage of implementing their digital currencies. Many issues of technical compatibility of various systems, data protection and common management remain unresolved.
Nevertheless, if the countries manage to overcome these contradictions, Brics Pay can form the long-awaited alternative financial infrastructure, which will not only reduce transaction costs, but also significantly limit the sanctioning power of the West in the long term, Berliner Zeitung fears.
`