BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors adopted a joint statement in Mumbai on September 10 that renews work on cross-border payment interoperability, greater use of national currencies and the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees initiative. The finance-track decision lands immediately before the September 12-13 leaders' summit in New Delhi, where India plans to push a further step: linking members' central-bank digital currencies for cross-border payments, Reuters reported.
The published design is incremental. A payment interface can reduce settlement cost and dependence on correspondent banks. A project guarantee can absorb part of credit or political risk and crowd private capital into infrastructure. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement provides emergency liquidity. None of those functions, individually or together, creates a common currency or a deep substitute for dollar funding markets.
The 2025 Rio leaders' declaration puts the September move in context. It welcomed a technical report from the BRICS Payment Task Force on greater interoperability, supported work on local-currency financing and authorized incubation of the Multilateral Guarantees initiative inside the New Development Bank. The September finance statement advances that program. India's CBDC proposal would extend the same federated approach into official digital-currency rails if leaders endorse it.
The guarantee pilot uses balance-sheet capacity, not a new cash pool
The 2025 governing documents say the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees initiative is to begin inside the NDB as a pilot and start without additional capital contributions. Its purpose is to use guarantees and the bank's risk-management capacity to improve project bankability, initially for NDB members.
The published guidelines describe an ambition to mobilize roughly five to ten times private investment relative to public capital, subject to underwriting, phased onboarding and the NDB's capital constraints. That is contingent risk-bearing: the bank uses balance-sheet and guarantee capacity to support projects rather than governments first depositing a disclosed $10 billion cash fund.
That distinction matters for scale. A funded insurance pool has a defined cash capitalization that can be deployed or depleted. A guarantee program's capacity depends on exposure limits, expected losses, capital treatment, risk sharing and the credit quality of approved projects. The BRICS and NDB records cited in the finance track do not establish the widely circulated claim of a new $10 billion funded vehicle.
Payments are moving toward interoperability, not monetary union
The Rio declaration tasked finance ministries and central banks with improving interoperability among existing systems. Reuters reported on September 10 that India wants the leaders' summit to consider linking members' CBDCs as a way to facilitate cross-border trade. The proposal faces a practical constraint before geopolitics even enters: digital-currency adoption remains limited across several members, and common technical standards, settlement rules and governance would still have to be agreed.
That federated design fits the bloc's political diversity better than a centralized currency. Members have different sanctions exposure, convertibility regimes and relationships with Western financial systems. Compatible national rails allow bilateral or regional settlement to expand without requiring a BRICS central bank, a common monetary policy or a single geopolitical objective.
The dollar's role also rests on more than payment messaging. Trade invoicing, deep hedging markets, convertibility, legal certainty and the supply of dollar safe assets matter to banks and corporate treasurers. BRICS can reduce friction in selected corridors without recreating that full stack.
The finance record supports a narrower conclusion than the biggest de-dollarization headlines. BRICS is moving payment interoperability and project guarantees from studies toward operational pilots, and India is trying to add CBDC links to that agenda at the leaders' summit. Those steps can lower transaction friction and mobilize project finance at the margin. They do not yet amount to a common settlement currency, and the official documents do not support a newly funded $10 billion insurance pool.
Sources
- Reuters, September 10, 2026, on India's CBDC-link proposal: https://www.internazionale.it/ultime-notizie-reuters/2026/09/10/india-to-push-brics-digital-currency-link-despite-hurdles-sources-say
- Financial Express, September 11, 2026: https://www.financialexpress.com/policy/economy/fms-governors-pledge-on-mdb-reform-local-currency-trade/4337395/
- China Ministry of Finance, September 10, 2026: https://www.mof.gov.cn/en/news/mn/202609/t20260910_3997221.htm
- Associated Press on the New Delhi summit: https://apnews.com/article/india-brics-russia-china-iran-wars-a79c5d6df774a9471743cef7d0080688
- 2025 BRICS Rio leaders' declaration: https://www.ndb.int/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250705-BRICS-Leaders-Declaration-EN.pdf
- BRICS Multilateral Guarantees guidelines: https://infobrics.org/files/country/russia/documents/2025/economy_finance_trade_and_infrastructure/2025_06_07_Guidelines_on_the_BRICS_Multilateral_Guarantees_BMG.pdf
- NDB 2026 annual-meeting statement: https://www.ndb.int/news/statement-by-h-e-mr-dario-durigan-the-minister-of-finance-of-the-federative-republic-of-brazil-and-the-governor-for-brazil-to-ndb-at-the-opening-ceremony-of-the-11th-board-of-governors-annual/