What is BRICS Pay, and can it rival the West’s SWIFT payments system?

BRICS Pay is a decentralised digital payment system.

Leaders of participating countries gather for a family photo during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi [File: Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) / Handout via AFP]

The central theme of the BRICS bloc of nations is to push back against the global economic dominance of Western countries. That core value was very much at the centre of this year’s 18th BRICS Summit , which took place last week in India.

At the September 12 and 13 summit in New Delhi, leaders committed to expanding local currency trading systems and cross-border payment systems by investing in BRICS Pay, an initiative of the BRICS Business Council.

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“We acknowledge the work done to study the cross-border interoperability of payment and messaging channels, and the discussions on promoting trade settlements and investments using BRICS local currencies, while respecting national priorities and acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all approach,” leaders said in a joint declaration as the summit concluded.

They also encouraged the BRICS Payments Task Force (BPTF), a collaborative central bank expert platform focused on cross-border payment mechanisms, to “facilitate practical solutions for cross-border payments among BRICS countries, which are fast, low-cost, more accessible, efficient, transparent and safe”.

Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of Bengaluru-based think tank Takshashila Institution’s Geostrategy Programme, told Al Jazeera that the declaration indicates “that the quest is not for a single system, but perhaps a suite of options that can be agreed between member states to de-risk their trade and financial dealings”.

While the New Delhi declaration did not indicate that BRICS nations aim to replace the dollar or build their own common currency, it highlights how BRICS is increasingly trying to find alternate payment systems amid geopolitical tensions and Western trade sanctions on members of the bloc, Russia and China.

If systems like BRICS Pay become fully operational, they could work as alternatives to Western payment systems like SWIFT, however.

What is BRICS Pay and how will it work?

Proposed by the BRICS Business Council in 2018, BRICS Pay is a decentralised digital payment ecosystem developed to simplify payments between BRICS countries.

BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the initial members of the informal trading group. It was founded in 2006, with South Africa joining in 2010. Since then, more countries have joined – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia.

In all, that’s 11 member countries, accounting for roughly 49 percent of the world’s population and about 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).

According to the BRICS Pay website, it is a “strategic infrastructure” which can also be used by “friendly states” of BRICS countries. It is also meant to offer a “compatible option” for Western payment systems like SWIFT, Visa and Mastercard, but does not intend to replace them.

The payment system was officially endorsed by the BRICS Business Council in 2024 and in August this year, before the BRICS summit in New Delhi, the group’s finance ministers and central bank officials met in Jaipur, India, to discuss advancing the project.

It is currently in pilot and phased rollout stages and is not yet globally operational for all members.

How will BRICS Pay work?

BRICS Pay will connect national payment systems of member countries to each other so international payments can be made more easily.

This will mean that trading transactions between entities or individuals in two different countries can be processed in local currencies, removing the involvement of other currencies such as the dollar.

Payments in local currencies will be settled using QR codes, digital wallets or mobile applications.

Andrey Mikhaylishin, the CEO of BRICS Pay, told India’s Asian News International (ANI) on September 12 that many countries want to use their own payment infrastructure in this way.

“For example, Russia has Mir and a Fast Payment System. India has RuPay and UPI. Furthermore, the European Union is building its own payment infrastructure, called the European Payments Initiative. The UK also wants to create and build its own infrastructure,” he noted, adding that these systems, however, do not automatically work with each other.

“BRICS Pay is a payment ecosystem that can connect national payment infrastructures and give people the ability to use them when they are travelling in countries, not only within BRICS but around the world. It’s helpful for tourists who come to the country and gives them the service of using their own domestic means of payment,” he explained.

“On the other hand, we can talk about companies and banks that need to make settlements with each other. We do that too for B2B (Business-to-business) settlements. It’s a new kind of architecture, a fully decentralised architecture for settlements between countries,” he said.

“We don’t speak about de-dollarisation,” he said.

“We give more flexibility and more types of payment options for our citizens, companies and banks. If they want to use the dollar, they can use the dollar, too,” he added.

How are international payments made currently?

While BRICS Pay has yet to become fully operational, most transactions between countries, companies and even tourists take place through Western cross-border payments like SWIFT.

SWIFT is a cooperative company under Belgian law. It is owned by up to 3,500 shareholders linked to approximately 11,000 financial institutions across the world.

The system is overseen by the G10 central banks, as well as the European Central Bank, with its lead overseer being the National Bank of Belgium.

SWIFT is essentially a network used by banks to send secure messages about transfers of money and other transactions.

So if a company in India wants to pay a company in Europe, the payment currently passes through SWIFT.

More than 11,000 financial institutions around the world use SWIFT, making it the backbone of the international financial transfer system.

While most payments are made in the US dollar, the system also includes payments in the British pound, Indian rupees, euros, and yen, among others.

However, Russia has been banned from using the system due to its war on Ukraine. In February 2022, just days after Moscow’s invasion of Kyiv began, Western nations moved to block certain Russian banks’ access to the SWIFT international payment system.

This has made it harder for Russian banks to communicate with peers internationally, even in friendly countries such as China, slowing trade and making transactions costlier.

What makes BRICS Pay appealing?

Since 2024, at the annual BRICS Summits, Russia has been pushing for alternative payment systems and promoting national currencies, in an effort to bypass Western sanctions.

Alejandro Reyes, adjunct professor in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong, said that in such situations, BRICS Pay’s attractiveness is obvious.

“Russia’s experience with sanctions and the broader concerns among many emerging economies about dependence on Western-controlled financial infrastructure have created demand for alternatives,” he said.

But he stressed that BRICS is not a homogeneous bloc.

“India, Brazil, China, Russia the UAE and the other members have very different relationships with the dollar, with Western financial institutions and with one another. They also have different regulatory systems, capital controls and strategic interests,” he said.

“So the more plausible model is not a single centralised ‘BRICS payment system’, but a network of interoperable national systems, connecting mechanisms such as India’s UPI, Brazil’s Pix and other domestic payment platforms and allowing more transactions to be settled in national currencies.”

Could BRICS Pay replace SWIFT?

BRICS Pay has been designed to provide a parallel, interoperable channel to the Western SWIFT network and analysts say it has not been designed to replace it.

“I don’t see BRICS Pay replacing SWIFT globally in the foreseeable future. SWIFT has enormous advantages of scale, trust, standardisation, compliance infrastructure and network effects built up over decades,” Reyes said.

“But that doesn’t mean BRICS Pay is insignificant. If it develops successfully, it could gradually reduce reliance on SWIFT in particular trade corridors, especially for intra-BRICS transactions conducted in local currencies,” he explained.

“In that sense, the real challenge to SWIFT may be less that one new system displaces it and more that the international payments architecture becomes more plural and fragmented, with several networks operating alongside one another,” he added.

Have BRICS countries been using other payment systems?

Yes. BRICS countries have been using domestic payment systems.

UPI (or Unified Payments Interface) is largely used in India for retail transactions. While it is also present in other countries, including Singapore, France and the UAE, UPI is not used heavily for international trade, according to Kewalramani.

Brazil has also been using a payment system called Pix, which enables people to settle transactions through their bank accounts, while China uses Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for the Asia Pacific at Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that CIPS already avoids the SWIFT system.

But she stressed that while these domestic systems within BRICS countries exist, “the key question here is whether they can be linked” through systems like BRICS Pay.

BRICS Pay是一个去中心化的数字支付系统。

在德里举行的第十八届金砖国家峰会期间，与会各国领导人合影留念。[图片来源：印度新闻信息局 (PIB) / 法新社]

金砖国家集团的核心主题是抵制西方国家在全球经济中的主导地位。这一核心价值观是上周在印度举行的第十八届金砖国家峰会的重点。

在 9 月 12 日至 13 日于新德里举行的峰会上，各国领导人承诺通过投资金砖国家工商理事会的倡议“金砖国家支付”，扩大本地货币交易系统和跨境支付系统。

金砖国家峰会（共3项）第一部分：主要结论是什么？

世界各国领导人齐聚新德里，参加金砖国家峰会最后一天（共3条记录，此为第2条）

列表 3/3：伊朗外长访问北京之际，中国能否扮演和平缔造者的角色？

“我们认可为研究跨境支付和信息渠道互操作性所做的工作，以及在尊重各国优先事项并承认没有一成不变的方法的前提下，就促进使用金砖国家本币进行贸易结算和投资进行的讨论，”领导人在峰会闭幕之际发表联合声明称。

他们还鼓励金砖国家支付工作组（BPTF）——一个专注于跨境支付机制的中央银行专家合作平台——“促进金砖国家之间跨境支付的切实可行的解决方案，这些方案应快速、低成本、更便捷、高效、透明和安全”。

总部位于班加罗尔的智库塔克沙希拉研究所地缘战略项目主席马诺杰·凯瓦拉马尼告诉半岛电视台，该宣言表明“寻求的不是单一体系，而是成员国之间可以达成一致的一系列方案，以降低其贸易和金融交易的风险”。

虽然新德里的声明并未表明金砖国家的目标是取代美元或建立自己的共同货币，但它凸显了在地缘政治紧张局势和西方对成员国、俄罗斯和中国实施贸易制裁的情况下，金砖国家正日益努力寻找替代支付系统。

如果像 BRICS Pay 这样的系统能够全面投入运营，它们可以作为 SWIFT 等西方支付系统的替代方案。

什么是金砖国家支付计划（BRICS Pay）？它将如何运作？

BRICS Pay 由金砖国家工商理事会于 2018 年提出，是一个去中心化的数字支付生态系统，旨在简化金砖国家之间的支付。

金砖国家（BRICS）指的是巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非，这五个国家是该非正式贸易集团的最初成员。该集团成立于2006年，南非于2010年加入。此后，又有埃及、埃塞俄比亚、伊朗、沙特阿拉伯、阿拉伯联合酋长国和印度尼西亚等国家加入。

总共有 11 个成员国，约占世界人口的 49%，约占世界国内生产总值 (GDP) 的 40%。

根据金砖国家支付网站的说法，它是一个“战略基础设施”，金砖国家的“友好国家”也可以使用。它旨在为SWIFT、Visa和Mastercard等西方支付系统提供“兼容选项”，但并不打算取代它们。

该支付系统于 2024 年获得金砖国家工商理事会的正式认可。今年 8 月，在金砖国家峰会于新德里举行之前，该集团的财政部长和央行官员在印度斋浦尔举行会议，讨论推进该项目。

目前该服务处于试点和分阶段推广阶段，尚未在全球范围内对所有成员开放。

金砖国家支付机制将如何运作？

金砖国家支付系统将成员国的国家支付系统连接起来，使国际支付更加便捷。

这意味着两个不同国家的实体或个人之间的交易可以用当地货币进行结算，无需涉及美元等其他货币。

以当地货币支付的款项将通过二维码、电子钱包或移动应用程序进行结算。

金砖国家支付首席执行官安德烈·米哈伊利申 (Andrey Mikhaylishin) 于 9 月 12 日告诉印度亚洲新闻国际 (ANI)，许多国家希望以这种方式使用自己的支付基础设施。

“例如，俄罗斯有Mir和快速支付系统。印度有RuPay和UPI。此外，欧盟正在建设自己的支付基础设施，称为欧洲支付倡议。英国也希望创建和建设自己的支付基础设施，”他指出，并补充说，然而，这些系统之间并不能自动兼容。

他解释说：“BRICS Pay是一个支付生态系统，它可以连接各国的支付基础设施，使人们在旅行时能够使用这些支付方式，不仅限于金砖国家内部，也包括世界各地。这对来此旅游的游客很有帮助，让他们能够使用本国的支付方式。”

“另一方面，我们也可以谈谈需要相互结算的公司和银行。我们也为企业对企业（B2B）结算提供这种服务。这是一种新型架构，一种完全去中心化的跨国结算架构，”他说道。

他说：“我们不谈去美元化。”

“我们为公民、企业和银行提供更灵活、更多样的支付方式。如果他们想用美元，也可以用美元，”他补充道。

目前国际支付是如何进行的？

虽然 BRICS Pay 尚未完全投入运营，但国家、公司甚至游客之间的大多数交易都是通过 SWIFT 等西方跨境支付方式进行的。

SWIFT是一家根据比利时法律成立的合作公司。它由多达3500名股东所有，这些股东与全球约11000家金融机构有关联。

该系统由 G10 中央银行和欧洲中央银行监管，其主要监管机构是比利时国家银行。

SWIFT本质上是一个银行用来发送有关资金转移和其他交易的安全信息的网络。

因此，如果印度的一家公司想向欧洲的一家公司付款，目前的付款是通过 SWIFT 进行的。

全球超过 11,000 家金融机构使用 SWIFT，使其成为国际金融转账系统的支柱。

虽然大部分支付都是以美元进行的，但该系统也包括以英镑、印度卢比、欧元和日元等货币进行的支付。

然而，由于俄罗斯对乌克兰发动战争，该国已被禁止使用该系统。2022年2月，就在莫斯科入侵基辅几天后，西方国家采取行动，阻止部分俄罗斯银行接入SWIFT国际支付系统。

这使得俄罗斯银行更难与国际同行沟通，即使是与中国等友好国家沟通，也导致贸易放缓，交易成本上升。

金砖国家支付机制的吸引力何在？

自 2024 年以来，俄罗斯在每年的金砖国家峰会上都在推动替代支付系统和推广本国货币，以期绕过西方制裁。

香港大学政治及公共行政学系兼职教授亚历杭德罗·雷耶斯表示，在这种情况下，金砖国家支付的吸引力显而易见。

他说：“俄罗斯遭受制裁的经历，以及许多新兴经济体对依赖西方控制的金融基础设施的普遍担忧，都催生了对替代方案的需求。”

但他强调，金砖国家并非一个同质集团。

他说：“印度、巴西、中国、俄罗斯、阿联酋和其他成员国与美元、西方金融机构以及彼此之间的关系都截然不同。它们的监管体系、资本管制和战略利益也各不相同。”

“因此，更合理的模式不是单一的集中式‘金砖国家支付系统’，而是一个可互操作的国家系统网络，连接印度的 UPI、巴西的 Pix 和其他国内支付平台等机制，并允许更多交易以本国货币结算。”

金砖国家支付系统能否取代SWIFT？

BRICS Pay 的设计目的是为西方的 SWIFT 网络提供一个并行、可互操作的通道，分析人士表示，它的设计目的并非取代西方的 SWIFT 网络。

雷耶斯表示：“我认为在可预见的未来，金砖国家支付系统不会在全球范围内取代SWIFT。SWIFT拥有巨大的优势，包括规模、信任度、标准化、合规基础设施以及数十年来积累的网络效应。”

“但这并不意味着金砖国家支付系统不重要。如果它发展顺利，可能会逐步减少对SWIFT的依赖，尤其是在某些贸易通道，特别是金砖国家内部以本币进行的交易中，”他解释说。

“从这个意义上讲，SWIFT 面临的真正挑战可能不在于一个新系统取代它，而在于国际支付架构变得更加多元化和碎片化，多个网络并存，”他补充道。

金砖国家是否使用过其他支付系统？

是的。金砖国家一直都在使用国内支付系统。

UPI（统一支付接口）在印度主要用于零售交易。虽然新加坡、法国和阿联酋等其他国家也使用UPI，但据Kewalramani称，UPI在国际贸易中的应用并不广泛。

巴西也一直在使用名为 Pix 的支付系统，该系统允许人们通过银行账户结算交易，而中国则使用跨境银行间支付系统 (CIPS)。

法国外贸银行亚太区首席经济学家艾丽西亚·加西亚·埃雷罗 (Alicia Garcia Herrero) 在香港告诉半岛电视台，CIPS 已经避开了 SWIFT 系统。

但她强调，虽然金砖国家内部存在这些国内系统，但“关键问题在于它们是否可以通过金砖国家支付等系统连接起来”。