India’s central bank has proposed that BRICS countries link their official digital currencies to facilitate cross-border trade and tourism payments, according to two sources, a move that could reduce reliance on the US dollar amid rising geopolitical tensions.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recommended to the government that a proposal connecting the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) be included on the agenda for the 2026 BRICS summit, the sources told Reuters on Monday. They requested anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly.
India will host the summit later this year. If the recommendation is accepted, a proposal to link the digital currencies of BRICS members would be introduced for the first time. The BRICS organisation includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, among others.
The initiative could irritate the United States, which has warned against moves to bypass the dollar. Former US President Donald Trump has previously described the BRICS alliance as “anti-American” and threatened to impose tariffs on its members.
The RBI, India’s central government, and the central banks of Brazil and Russia did not respond to emails seeking comment. The People’s Bank of China said it had no information to share on the subject, while the South African central bank declined to comment.
The RBI’s proposal to link BRICS’ CBDCs for cross-border trade finance and tourism payments has not been previously reported. It builds on a 2025 declaration at a BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, which called for interoperability between members’ payment systems to make cross-border transactions more efficient.
The RBI has publicly expressed interest in linking India’s digital rupee with other nations’ CBDCs to expedite cross-border transactions and strengthen its currency’s global usage. The central bank has emphasized that these efforts are not aimed at promoting de-dollarisation.
While none of the BRICS members have fully launched their digital currencies, all five main members are running pilot projects. India’s digital currency, the e-rupee, has attracted a total of 7 million retail users since its launch in December 2022, while China has pledged to boost international usage of the digital yuan.
The RBI has encouraged adoption of the e-rupee by enabling offline payments, offering programmability for government subsidy transfers, and allowing fintech firms to provide digital currency wallets.
For the BRICS digital currency linkages to succeed, discussions would need to cover interoperable technology, governance rules, and methods for settling imbalanced trade volumes, one source said. The source noted that hesitation among members to adopt technological platforms from other countries could delay progress, and concrete advancement would require consensus on technology and regulation.
One approach being explored to manage potential trade imbalances is bilateral foreign exchange swap arrangements between central banks, the sources added. Previous attempts by Russia and India to conduct more trade in their local currencies faced roadblocks, with Russia accumulating large balances of the Indian rupee that had limited use. This led India’s central bank to permit investing such balances in local bonds. Weekly or monthly settlements for transactions are being proposed via these swaps, the second source said.
Founded in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, BRICS later expanded to include South Africa and has since added newer members such as the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Indonesia.
The bloc has returned to the spotlight amid Trump’s revived trade-war rhetoric and tariff threats, including warnings aimed at countries aligning with BRICS. India has also edged closer to Russia and China as it faced trade friction with the US.
While global interest in CBDCs has been tempered by the rising adoption of stablecoins, India continues to position its e-rupee as a safer, more regulated alternative.
CBDCs “do not pose many of the risks associated with stablecoins,” RBI Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar said last month. “Beyond the facilitation of illicit payments and circumvention of control measures, stablecoins raise significant concerns for monetary stability, fiscal policy, banking intermediation, and systemic resilience.”
India fears widespread stablecoin use could fragment national payments and weaken its digital payments ecosystem, Reuters reported in September.
