BRICS’ push to reduce reliance on the US dollar is accelerating in 2026, with member states increasingly settling trade in national currencies and rolling out alternative payment rails — a development with clear implications for crypto, CBDCs and cross-border payments. What’s happening now - Russia and China are reportedly conducting roughly 90% of their bilateral trade in rubles and yuan. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that in 2024 “the share of our national currency, the ruble, and the currencies of friendly countries in Russia’s settlements with other BRICS countries amounted to 90 per cent.” - Moscow frames this as pragmatic, not hostile: “We are not refusing, not fighting the dollar, but if they don’t let us work with it, what can we do? We then have to look for other alternatives, which is happening,” Putin said. Alternative rails, not a single currency - Rather than creating one BRICS currency, the bloc is building an ecosystem of national rails and cross-border systems. BRICS Pay and projects such as mBridge — which enables instant central-bank payments using digital national currencies between China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE — are central to that design. - BRICS Pay is also engineering links among national payment networks like Russia’s SPFS, China’s CIPS and India’s UPI, positioning the bloc to clear more flows without routing through dollar-denominated correspondent banks. - Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said de-dollarization will be a core issue at summits, with officials predicting the alliance will bring developing economies into “a whole new ball game.” India’s cautious stance and internal divergence - India has publicly tempered the rhetoric. In March 2025 in London, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said: “I do not believe we have any policy to have a replacement to the dollar. Global economic stability is pegged on the dollar as the reserve currency, and currently, the last thing we want in our world is less economic stability.” He added that there is no coherent BRICS push to replace the dollar. - Putin has likewise downplayed the notion of an immediate single BRICS currency: in October 2024 he said proposals for a common currency are “too early” and that the bloc “do not have such goals among ourselves.” Geopolitics and pushback - The move away from the dollar has already drawn geopolitical friction. The article notes a U.S. threat — reportedly from former President Trump — to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries that pursue de-dollarization in 2026. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reacted at an emergency summit in September 2025, framing such tariff threats as coercive and interventionist. Why crypto and CBDC watchers should care - The BRICS approach emphasizes national currencies and state-backed payment infrastructures and CBDC pilots (mBridge’s digital-RNB/RMB/other CBDC connectivity is a prime example). That intensifies competition for the U.S. dollar as the dominant settlement currency and creates new rails that could reduce reliance on correspondent banking — a structural shift for cross-border liquidity and FX corridors. - For crypto markets, the trend is a mixed signal: on one hand, sovereign digital rails and tokenized CBDCs could crowd out private stablecoins in certain corridors; on the other, fragmented cross-border rails and changing reserve dynamics may spur demand for interoperable digital assets and decentralized liquidity solutions. Bottom line BRICS de-dollarization in 2026 remains an incremental and pragmatic process: more local-currency settlements, expanded national payment networks and CBDC pilots — not yet a unified BRICS currency. Still, the combination of technical rails (mBridge, BRICS Pay, SPFS, CIPS, UPI) and shifting settlement patterns is a meaningful challenge to dollar dominance and a development crypto and payments markets should watch closely. Key near-term indicators: BRICS Pay rollouts, further CBDC integrations, and outcomes from upcoming BRICS summits. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news