India is heading into the BRICS summit with a clear preference for plumbing over politics: build the rails for cross-border payments, but do not mint a new bloc currency. Officials and policy watchers say New Delhi is unlikely to endorse a common BRICS unit of account at the September 12-13 gathering, instead backing interoperability between national payment systems and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, as a more workable way to reduce friction in trade.
Payments Over Currency
The distinction matters. A common currency would require a far deeper level of macroeconomic coordination, shared monetary discipline and political trust than BRICS members currently possess. India has long been wary of any proposal that could dilute monetary sovereignty or expose the rupee to external shocks from economies with very different inflation, interest-rate and exchange-rate regimes. By contrast, linking payment systems can be framed as a technical upgrade rather than a strategic surrender.
That is why the likely Indian position at the summit is expected to focus on interoperability: allowing domestic rails to talk to one another, enabling faster settlement, lower fees and fewer intermediaries for trade flows. For India's exporters and importers, especially in sectors such as automotive components, electric vehicles and mobility hardware, even modest reductions in transaction costs can improve competitiveness. The promise is not a new reserve currency, but a cheaper way to move money across borders.
RBI's Digital Push
The Reserve Bank of India has already signaled where it sees the future. The central bank has been pushing pilots and policy work around the digital rupee, while also exploring how CBDCs could eventually interoperate with other jurisdictions. In practical terms, that means a payment made in one country's digital currency could be settled more directly in another system, potentially bypassing layers of correspondent banking that add delay, cost and compliance complexity.
For India, this is an attractive middle path. It preserves the rupee's centrality in domestic policy while allowing New Delhi to participate in a broader architecture for cross-border payments. It also fits with India's wider digital public infrastructure playbook, which has already turned domestic payments into a global reference point through the Unified Payments Interface. The challenge is that cross-border use is far harder than domestic scale. Different legal regimes, anti-money laundering rules, data standards and settlement finality requirements can all slow progress.
Trade Pressures Rise
The timing is not accidental. India's position is being shaped against a backdrop of intensifying trade pressure, including tariff threats from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly used tariffs as leverage in trade disputes. For policymakers in New Delhi, the message is blunt: reduce dependence on any single currency corridor, but do not rush into a bloc currency that could create fresh vulnerabilities or provoke unnecessary geopolitical backlash.
A payments-first approach also gives India room to balance its relationships. BRICS has expanded its political profile, but its members are not a monetary union and do not share the institutional architecture that underpins the euro. China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa and newer members may all support greater de-dollarisation in principle, yet the technical and trade hurdles remain substantial. Exchange-rate volatility, capital controls, sanctions exposure and uneven financial infrastructure all complicate any attempt to move from rhetoric to a shared currency.
For India, the calculus is therefore pragmatic. A common BRICS currency may be a powerful symbol, but symbols do not settle invoices. Interoperable payment systems, by contrast, can be deployed incrementally, tested in corridors of trade, and expanded if they work. That makes them more suitable for a bloc that wants to lower transaction costs without creating a new monetary authority.
The likely outcome in New Delhi is not a dramatic rejection of BRICS financial cooperation, but a narrowing of ambition. India appears ready to support the infrastructure of faster cross-border payments, including CBDC links, while drawing a firm line against any move toward a shared currency. In a world of rising tariff threats and fragmented trade, that may be the most politically durable compromise available.