Finance News

Story: BRICS CBDC Push: India’s Reserve Bank Governor Backs Cross-Border Payment Link

By Bruce Buterin

1 / 15

Which Countries Are at the Table. BRICS currently includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — five economies that…

2 / 15

Why This Matters for Crypto and Digital Finance. For the broader digital asset world, a BRICS CBDC linkage would be a big deal.

3 / 15

What Comes Next for BRICS Digital Finance. The BRICS group has been pushing financial cooperation harder in recent years, partly as a…

4 / 15

The pitch is ambitious. Sanjay Malhotra, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, told an audience in Mumbai on August 11 that BRICS nations are actively exploring how to connect…

5 / 15

The goal, pretty much as Malhotra framed it, is cost. Cross-border payments between BRICS countries are expensive, slow, and riddled with friction. Banks charge heavy fees.

6 / 15

BRICS currently includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — five economies that collectively account for a huge chunk of global trade.

7 / 15

And that's before you even get to the regulatory side. Linking payment rails across five jurisdictions means five sets of financial regulators need to agree on rules, data…

8 / 15

For the broader digital asset world, a BRICS CBDC linkage would be a big deal. State-backed digital currencies have sometimes been framed as rivals to decentralized crypto — and…

9 / 15

It's worth remembering that the current correspondent banking system wasn't built for speed. It was built for control.

10 / 15

More context: FCA Backs Five Fast-Growing Fintechs as Scale-up Unit Expands Beyond First Cohort

11 / 15

Malhotra didn't get into the technical architecture during the Mumbai event. Unclear whether the group is looking at a hub-and-spoke model, bilateral linkages, or something else…

12 / 15

The discussions are still preliminary. Technical and regulatory aspects haven't been detailed publicly. Further approvals are needed before anything moves to implementation.

13 / 15

The BRICS group has been pushing financial cooperation harder in recent years, partly as a response to dollar dominance in global trade and partly because the member nations…

14 / 15

Whether it actually gets built is a different question. International payment system integrations have a long history of taking far longer than announced, running into political…

15 / 15

But Malhotra's comments carry weight. He's not a junior official floating a trial balloon. He's the governor of one of the world's largest central banks, speaking at a formal…

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?