One of the proposals discussed during the previous BRICS summit last October 2024 in Kazan, Russia, was the possibility of creating a new payment system as an alternative to SWIFT, currently the main interbank payment network. The interest was discussed with more impetus at the most recent XVII BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which took place on July 5 and 6.
During the seventeenth annual meeting of the BRICS in Rio de Janeiro 2025, the bloc's leaders proposed moving forward with the creation of such a system, within the framework of the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, which aims to facilitate more accessible, fast and secure transactions between member countries.
According to the summit's final declaration, the group welcomed the technical report prepared by the BRICS Payments Working Group, which explained possible strategies to ensure greater interoperability between national financial systems.
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a network connecting more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries controlled by the major Western powers, which use it as a political tool to impose unilateral economic sanctions.
This has been especially exploited by the United States and its allies to economically sanction several countries or to exclude their companies from this network, preventing them from making payments, as is the case of Russia, a recurrent victim of U.S. and EU sanctions.
Faced with this reality, the bloc seeks to reduce its dependence on the US dollar in international trade and finance, so a new alternative payment system would focus especially on de-dollarization in member countries.
In summary, the possible new alternative system pursues the following objectives:
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Facilitate more accessible, fast and secure transactions between member countries.
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Reduce dependence on platforms controlled by Northern powers.
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Strengthen trade and investment among the countries of the Global South.
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Protect the countries of the bloc against unilateral sanctions.
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Ensure greater monetary and financial autonomy.
Driven mainly by China and Russia, as well as established as a priority by Brazil during its presidency of the bloc, the initiative is part of a broader project of de-dollarization of international trade, and should be complemented by other financial measures such as the use of the New Development Bank (NDB) to finance in a local currency and strengthen regional insurance and reserve mechanisms for the bloc.
In this regard, the final declaration of the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro proposes the development of a Multilateral Guarantee initiative through the NDB, a tool to stimulate investment in infrastructure in member countries, a measure that is considered central to making the new cross-border payment system viable, as well as to consolidating the group's financial autonomy.
The recently concluded summit demonstrates that, in the midst of the constant sanctions to which many BRICS nations are subjected, the bloc is proposing the construction of its own financial ecosystem that allows for greater economic sovereignty and avoids the vulnerability implied by dependence on systems such as SWIFT.