BRICS Pay: New Opportunities for Cross-Border Payments and Business

In recent years, international payments have remained a sensitive issue for businesses working with foreign partners and clients. Limitations of traditional payment infrastructure, difficulties using international bank cards, and rising costs of cross-border transfers have driven the search for alternative payment mechanisms.

One such project is BRICS Pay, a system aimed at ensuring interaction between the national payment infrastructures of various countries.

What is BRICS Pay?

Unlike traditional international payment systems, BRICS Pay does not envisage the creation of a single supranational payment platform or a common currency.

The project’s concept is based on the unification of existing national payment instruments through dedicated technological gateways. This approach allows for the preservation of the independence of national financial systems while simultaneously facilitating settlements between users from different countries.

In essence, we are talking about creating an additional payment channel that can operate in parallel with existing banking and card systems.

What tasks does the new infrastructure solve?

Initially, the project is focused on servicing retail payments.

The most obvious example is the ability for foreign citizens to pay for goods and services in another country without opening a local bank account or using international payment cards.

For businesses, this means potentially simplifying their work with foreign clients, increasing the availability of payment services for tourists, and reducing dependence on individual international payment operators.

The development of a corporate segment is also being considered in the future, which will allow the infrastructure to be used for cross-border settlements between companies.

The principle of decentralization and its significance

One of the key features of the project is its distributed architecture.

Unlike centralized payment systems, where a significant portion of management and transaction processing is concentrated in a single center, the new model involves the interaction of independent national nodes.

From a legal perspective, this approach has several important consequences.

First, each country retains control over its own payment infrastructure and applies national requirements for financial regulation.

Secondly, the dependence of system participants on the decisions of individual foreign operators and external restrictions is reduced.

Thirdly, it creates the possibility of more flexible integration of new states and payment instruments without a large-scale restructuring of the entire infrastructure.

Regulatory issues remain a key challenge

Despite the technological readiness of individual elements of the system, the further development of the project will largely depend on the harmonization of legal and regulatory approaches between states.

For the cross-border payment infrastructure to function, a number of issues need to be addressed:

• identification and verification of clients;
• counteracting money laundering and financing of prohibited activities;
• protection of personal data;
• currency regulation;
• tax control;
• the procedure for settling disputes between settlement participants.

Further complexity is created by differences in national licensing requirements for payment services and financial infrastructure operators.

Business opportunities

For Russian companies, the development of such projects could open up additional tools for working with foreign partners and clients.

Of particular interest are the prospects for using new payment channels in the tourism industry, e-commerce, the hotel business, the service sector and international trade.

Furthermore, the expansion of alternative payment infrastructure potentially reduces the risks associated with restricted access to certain international financial services.

At the same time, businesses should take into account that the introduction of new payment mechanisms will inevitably be accompanied by the emergence of additional compliance requirements, client identification procedures, and control over the origin of funds.

Development prospects

At the current stage, BRICS Pay is seen primarily as a tool for increasing the compatibility of national payment systems and simplifying international settlements.

In the future, the project may become part of a broader financial infrastructure, including mechanisms for exchanging financial messages, corporate payment solutions, and tools for interacting with national digital currencies.

However, the key factor for success will remain not so much the technological component, but the ability of participants to agree on uniform operating rules, ensure legal certainty, and build trust between national financial systems.