BRICS has focused on how to minimise its bargaining disposition with respect to the western financial system for several years. Its greater challenge is to demonstrate that the alternatives being developed actually provide enough benefits for banks, enterprises and authorities so that they can adopt them.Illuminated decorations for the 18th BRICS Summit, at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. (X/@MEAIndia)This makes India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026 a crucial test. With New Delhi gearing up to host the 18th BRICS Summit from September 12 to 13, the real question is not whether the group will make an announcement about a new currency or how it plans to challenge the dollar. The issue is whether BRICS will be capable of creating a financial framework that is cost-effective, quick, secure, and has the potential of expansion. Under the theme of Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability, India’s presidency has brought the focus on active economic cooperation to make the summit an occasion for doing something useful rather than limiting itself to declarations. The distinction is meaningful. BRICS possesses three instruments of potential relevance: payment interoperability among different countries, increased use of local currencies, and the New Development Bank (NDB). The combination of these elements forms an attempt to shift from merely criticising the existing financial system toward creating alternatives to it.The first step in the journey is linked to the possibility of making international payments. International transactions can involve correspondent banks, multiple currencies, and foreign-exchange transactions. These levels may lead to increased costs and delays in settlement. SWIFT functions as the messaging system based on which financial institutions exchange payment information. At the same time, the global payment system is functioning on correspondent banking and foreign-exchange transactions.That is why, it could be stated that BRICS does not need to replace SWIFT for the reduction of dependence on the existing financial infrastructure. The cardinal objective appears to be interoperability which implies that payment systems of the nations shall be able to communicate with each other more effectively, use local currencies to a higher degree, and eliminate unnecessary conversions and intermediaries with the help of this technology.The BRICS declaration for 2025 has embraced the development of a cross-border payments program and signaled the potential for improvements of payment systems compatibility among members. On its part, the call has an emphasis on tangible results: It strives for a more rapid, affordable, widespread, efficient, and secure way of making cross-border payments.India has a potentially useful experience to draw from here. The experience of India with UPI shows how using interoperable payment infrastructure can help facilitate transactions domestically as well as internationally. Besides, the ministry of finance signaled that the Reserve Bank of India has been trying to achieve bilateral and multilateral agreements for CBDC to tackle the issue of costs, speed, and transparency related to cross-border transactions.This gives India a chance to advocate for BRICS interoperability instead of monetary disintegration. Connecting payment systems, introducing common technical standards, and promoting local currency payments look much more feasible than creating a single currency for all BRICS countries. However, technical feasibility is only the first hurdle.An important aspect of payment systems is their actual use by banks. BRICS is characterised by multiple currencies, regulations, capital controls, and financial markets. One payment system can work between two states but become much more complicated with an increase in participants. There is liquidity as a separate issue as well. Even if a payment system works for two states, the business community may still prefer to make payments in a common currency if difficulties arise with conversion or the currencies of the states in question are unstable. From this perspective, BRICS requires a four-part credibility test: costs, speed, liquidity, and trust. If a BRICS payment system is cheap but not liquid, it will discourage business. If it is fast but has difficulties with integration in banks, its use will be severely limited. If it helps escape the dollar, but raises settlement risks, it is uncertain whether the payment system is really efficient. This is the reason why discussing de-dollarisation does not suffice; BRICS does not have to create its payment system able to replace the dollar; it has to provide new channels that are capable of making its member states better off.The same principle holds for the NDB. The NDB could be regarded as BRICS’ major accomplishment in institutional terms, as it signifies a more concrete creation than mere summit declarations. Its purpose is to raise capital for infrastructure and sustainable development projects, and enable BRICS to have an effective mechanism for showing that it contributes to global development funding.Its achievements cannot be overlooked. By December 2022, the NDB had approved $42.9 billion across 139 projects, covering such sectors as renewable energy, housing, and water infrastructure. More current projects are mainly concentrated on renewable energy, transport, water and sanitation, environmental sustainability, social services, and digital infrastructure. Its challenge, however, is its size.The NDB has a capital base of approximately $100 billion, which is relatively small in light of the vast infrastructure and development funding needs of the developing world. The question is not whether it will be able to surpass the World Bank overnight, but rather whether it can mobilise much greater quantities of money, increase lending in local currencies, where feasible, and make use of guarantees and co-financing to induce private investment.In this sense, the NDB's future may be less about competing with existing multilateral development banks and more about cooperating with them. Working with national development banks and other multilateral entities could allow the NDB to increase the results of its operations. The measure of a development bank's efficiency is not its volume of loans but the amount of additional funds it obtains.This group is made up of countries with greatly varying economic structures and monetary systems as well as geopolitical interests. The expansion increases BRICS' economic weight and representation of the Global South, but at the same time, it complicates reaching a consensus. The lack of clearly defined membership criteria has been an additional institutional challenge.In this context, India faces difficulties in implementing grand financial projects. A unified BRICS monetary bloc cannot form as a result of political agreement. However, it does not mean that financial cooperation should fail. The more viable model appears to be functional cooperation instead of political unity. BRICS members do not need to be in agreement regarding every geopolitical question in order to connect their payment systems. A common foreign policy is not necessary for financing infrastructure through the NDB. One does not need to completely abandon the dollar in order to increase the use of national currencies.The differentiation discussed is essential for India’s interests. India should not focus on declaring the success of its presidency related to the issue of de-dollarisation. What should be done instead is a bigger emphasis on incremental but visible reforms: creation of payment networks with mutual use of the technologies by countries, creation of viable local currency settlement systems, increase in the NDB’s capacity, increase in co-financing and financing infrastructure projects, energy transition and digital development.The meeting should be evaluated based on the practical outcomes but not on their statements. The creation of a new BRICS currency will be an event for the media, but this is not enough to change the situation in the world of finance. India has a chance to transform BRICS from a group concerned with finance but achieving little concrete to one with real financial power. NDB and BRICS payment initiatives have great value precisely here. They don’t need to replace world finance to make an impact; they need merely to provide developing nations with viable alternatives that must be practical in operation. (The views expressed are personal)This article is authored by Kanav Sharma, public policy researcher and Janvi Singhi, independent researcher.