BRICS Is Not Building a New Currency: It Is Building Something Smarter

The same thing has been reported in headlines for months: BRICS wants to replace the US dollar. a single currency that is used by all of its members and is prepared to compete with the world's most powerful currency. It sounds dramatic, but it also turns out to be mostly wrong.
Actually, what BRICS is doing is quieter, less flashy, and, in many ways, more significant. The bloc is not trying to create one new currency. It is building a system where a digital payment network lets countries trade with each other using their own existing currencies, without needing to go through the dollar or through the Western-led banking system called SWIFT, and India is right at the centre of it.
What precisely is this system then? Think of it this way. Currently, when two nations wish to engage in trade, the majority of the time, they must first convert their funds into US dollars, move them through a global banking network known as SWIFT, and then convert them back into the currency of the other nation on the other end. It takes a long time, it costs money, and it means that almost every major trade in the world goes through the financial system of one country. That middle step should be skipped in the BRICS proposal. Instead, countries would pay each other directly using their own digital currencies, India's digital rupee, China's digital yuan, Russia's digital ruble, linked together through a shared system. Each country keeps full control over its own money. What changes is the road that connects them.
This is not a fantasy. India already has a successful case study at home. The UAE's payment platform is already connected to its UPI digital payments system. People in India can send money to the UAE quickly and cheaply, without involving dollars at all. The BRICS want to implement the same concept across the entire bloc.