The proposal to link CBDCs would be part of the agenda for the leaders’ meeting, the sources said, though the limited adoption of digital currencies globally could complicate implementation, the report added. The story so far: The New Delhi Declaration that came out of the recent BRICS Summit in the national capital resolved to increase trade between member-countries and payments in national currencies. The proposal was, however, not part of the Declaration.
Days before the summit, a report by the news agency Reuters quoted sources as saying that at the event, India would push to link central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for cross-border payments across BRICS nations, despite political and technical hurdles that could limit progress.
On the summit eve, Russia’s largest bank Sberbank said it saw major opportunities for India-Russia bilateral trade settlements through CBDCs. At a media briefing in New Delhi, Sberbank chief executive officer Herman Gref said trade settlement in CBDCs was much more efficient. Project mBridge is a group comprising the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and the Saudi Central Bank.
China launched the CIPS clearing and settlement services system in 2015 to internationalise yuan use. SEPAMA, Iran’s local interbank telecom system, has as many as 52 branches of Iranian banks and four unnamed foreign banks connect ing with 106 banks using the SPFS, the Central Bank of Iran said in 2023. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), an international financial institution owned by central banks to foster international monetary and financial cooperation, exited Project mBridge on October 31, 2024, after hand-holding it since 2019, when the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand launched the system. mBridge, a cross-bloc multi-CBDC platform with no Western bank, attained minimum viability status in 2024. A March 19, 2026 South China Morning Post report says CIPS processed 679.8 billion yuan ($98.7 billion) of transactions on average per day in 2025, just a fraction of the $1.9 trillion of domestic and international payments Chips settles each business day. The SPFS, formed as Russian entities were banned from SWIFT, has grown at a record pace in 2023, the Russian central bank said that year, as Moscow ramped up efforts to resolve financial shortcomings wrought by sanctions over the Ukraine war. Alla Bakina, director of the central bank’s national payment system department, said 50 new entities had joined Russia’s alternative system that year, taking the total number to 440, of which more than 100 are non-residents.
The Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), a Reuters report said, is backed by the People’s Bank of China. It allows global banks to clear cross-border yuan transactions directly onshore, instead of through clearing banks in offshore yuan hubs, the report said. The project team developed a new blockchain — the mBridge Ledger — custom-built by central banks to serve as a specialised and flexible platform for implementation of multi-currency cross-border payments in CBDCs, the BIS website says. “While the CIPS has gained ground — especially among China’s trading partners in Africa and Asia — it remains far smaller in scale than established global systems, such as the U.S.-based Clearing House Interbank Payments System (Chips),” the report said.
It was envisaged for direct peer-to-peer CBDC settlement without going through correspondent banks. Beijing now appears to be moving towards building CIPS into a global platform compliant with multi-currency settlements and other foreign payment channels, the report quoted a study led by Ju Jiandong, a chair professor at Tsinghua University’s PBC School of Finance.
