by Maya Majueran
The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi highlighted a transformation that once seemed largely theoretical but is becoming increasingly tangible: the emergence of a more diversified global financial architecture.
For BRICS and much of the Global South, the objective is not necessarily to replace one dominant currency or financial center with another. It is to create more choices -- more currencies for trade, more payment channels, more sources of development finance, and greater protection from external financial shocks.
These are not luxury demands. They are fundamental elements of financial sovereignty and economic resilience.
Nor should the Global South's search for alternatives automatically be interpreted as hostility toward the dollar or aggression against the existing financial system. Wanting more choices does not mean wanting to destroy what already exists. It means becoming less vulnerable to any single part of it.
What is taking shape in the BRICS framework is arguably more pragmatic and potentially more consequential: a financial architecture built around choice rather than replacement.
Greater use of national currencies, interoperable cross-border payment systems, diversified development finance, and stronger alternative institutions do not require dismantling the existing financial system. They create additional pathways alongside it.
The most practical driver of this transformation is the growing push to settle more intra-BRICS trade in national currencies.
The logic is straightforward. If two countries trade extensively with each other, not every transaction necessarily needs to pass through a third currency. Direct settlement can, where sufficient liquidity and financial infrastructure exist, reduce conversion costs, diversify currency exposure, and provide additional channels for trade when traditional payment systems face disruption.
The significance lies in accumulation. One local-currency transaction will not change global finance. Millions of them might.
Financial multipolarity therefore does not require the dramatic creation of a single BRICS currency. It can emerge gradually as countries trade more frequently in national currencies, connect payment networks, and develop alternative settlement mechanisms.
The new financial architecture may not be declared into existence. It may simply be built, transaction by transaction. This is where BRICS Pay becomes significant. It is being developed as a cross-border payment framework intended to improve interoperability among national payment systems and provide businesses and consumers with additional ways to settle transactions.
Payment networks must communicate. Currencies must be exchangeable efficiently. Settlement mechanisms must function reliably. Regulatory systems must be compatible enough for transactions to move securely across borders.
Financial multipolarity may ultimately be built not through political spectacle, but through financial plumbing -- the payment networks, settlement systems, currencies, and institutions that quietly give countries more choices.
If BRICS Pay represents the payment infrastructure of financial multipolarity, the New Development Bank (NDB) represents its institutional dimension.
Created by the BRICS countries, the NDB provides an additional source of financing for infrastructure and sustainable development beyond traditional multilateral institutions.
Its founding governance structure is particularly significant. The NDB's original five BRICS members began with equal shareholding and voting power, in contrast to the weighted voting structures of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where influence reflects shareholding and remains concentrated among major advanced economies.
But the NDB's significance lies not simply in lending money. It is also about how development finance can be structured.
Its growing emphasis on local-currency financing speaks directly to one of the Global South's most persistent vulnerabilities: earning in one currency while owing in another.
A government or business may operate a perfectly viable project and generate revenues domestically. But if its debt is denominated in dollars, a sharp appreciation of the dollar can make that debt substantially more expensive to service in local-currency terms.
U.S. monetary policy provides a clear example. When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in response to domestic American economic conditions, the consequences can extend far beyond U.S. borders through a stronger dollar, tighter global financial conditions, capital movements, and higher debt-servicing costs for developing economies.
The Federal Reserve is understandably mandated to manage the U.S. economy. But developing countries also have a legitimate interest in reducing their vulnerability to monetary decisions over which they have no control.
With tens of billions of dollars approved for infrastructure and sustainable development, the NDB demonstrates such institutions can finance transport, clean energy, water systems and other productive investments.
Progress toward financial multipolarity may come through technical agreements: payment systems becoming more interoperable, national currencies being used more frequently in trade, alternative sources of development finance expanding, and emerging economies gaining a stronger voice in global financial governance.
Every transaction settled through an additional currency, every payment network successfully connected, and every development project financed through an alternative institution adds another pathway to the global financial system.
For the Global South, that is ultimately what financial sovereignty means: not replacing one dependency with another, but having enough credible choices that dependence itself begins to diminish.
Editor's note: Maya Majueran serves as the director of the Belt and Road Initiative Sri Lanka, an independent and pioneering organization with strong expertise in Belt and Road Initiative advice and support.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Xinhua News Agency.