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BRIC nations this week proposed a cryptocurrency for payment settlements between its member countries—Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa—at an annual summit held in Brazil, BRIC member told reporters Thursday.
According to Russian media outlet RosBiznesConsulting (RBC), the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, General Kirill Dmitriev, said that payment transactions would go through the system and its associated cryptocurrency.
The BRICS cryptocurrency would transfer financial obligations “from one legal entity to another to confirm that the recipient will have claim rights, and the contractor will have obligations for a specific amount. It will not be money, we can say that it will be a paperless document flow to facilitate transactions,” Dmitriev told RBC. He added that cryptocurrency would protect transactions from third parties.
Dmitriev said that the development of payment systems are an important factor in the economic partnership between the BRICS countries in the face of increasing non-market risks [to] the global payment infrastructure.”
“An efficiently operating BRICS payment system [would be] able to stimulate settlements in national currencies and ensure the stability of settlements and investments between our countries, which form more than 20% of the global influx of foreign direct investment," he told reporters.
RBC also reported that the BRIC nations are working on payment system that rivals the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which allegedly allows the US to monitor transactions.
This comes as China is getting ready to launch its digital Renminbi, which analysts argue could help the Renminbi to become the global reserve currency, while those, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, say the US needs to keep innovating to keep its economic dominance. With four more major countries considering using blockchain technology, this piles even more pressure on the US to keep up or get left behind.