The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed linking BRICS nations’ central bank digital currencies to ease cross-border trade and tourism payments, aiming to reduce reliance on U.S. dollar. RBI has recommended the plan be placed on the agenda for the 2026 BRICS summit, according to sources.
Building Bridges
The RBI’s proposal builds on a 2025 declaration at a BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, which pushed for interoperability between members’ payment systems to make cross-border transactions more efficient.
The RBI has publicly expressed interest in linking India’s digital rupee with other nations’ central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to expedite cross-border transactions and bolster its currency’s global usage. It has, however, said its efforts to promote the rupee’s global use are not aimed at promoting de-dollarisation.
While none of the BRICS members have fully launched their digital currencies, all five main members have been running pilot projects.
India’s digital currency – called the e-rupee – has attracted a total of 7 million retail users since its launch in December 2022, while China has pledged to boost the international use of the digital yuan.
The RBI has encouraged the adoption of the e-rupee by enabling offline payments, providing programmability for government subsidy transfers and by allowing fintech firms to offer digital currency wallets.
For the BRICS digital currency linkages to be successful, elements like interoperable technology, governance rules and ways to settle imbalanced trade volumes would be among the discussion topics, sources said.
Long Road
The bloc has returned to the limelight thanks to Trump’s revived trade-war rhetoric and tariff threats, including warnings aimed at countries aligning with BRICS. At the same time, India has edged closer to Russia and China as it faced trade friction with the U.S.
Past efforts to turn BRICS into a major economic counterweight have run into hurdles, including an ambition to create a common BRICS currency, an idea that was floated by Brazil but was subsequently nixed
