BRICS Pay opens platform to more countries, eyes decentralised payment network

Gurugram (Haryana) [India], September 12 (ANI): BRICS Pay is looking to expand its cross-border payment network to more countries, with memorandums of understanding already signed with companies in China, Belarus and Turkey and plans to extend the platform to additional markets, its CEO Andrey Mikhaylishin said.
Mikhaylishin said BRICS Pay is being developed as an open payment ecosystem that can connect national payment infrastructure, allowing people and businesses to use the platform for cross-border transactions.
“As I said before, it's a totally open project. And every country can link to the project and use our technology,” Mikhaylishin told ANI in an exclusive interaction.
He said BRICS Pay is ready to transfer its source code and technology to countries seeking to connect to the project, indicating an approach aimed at allowing different national payment systems to work through a common infrastructure.
“We're ready to transfer our source code, our decisions for these countries,” he said.
Mikhaylishin said the platform already has agreements at different stages with multiple countries. Besides the recent trilateral agreement involving a BRICS Pay company from Russia, the Russian Direct Investment Fund and BRICS Pay India, the company has signed MOUs with a Chinese company and companies from Belarus and Turkey.
The India-Russia agreement is focused on developing the infrastructure needed to connect India's UPI with Russian payment infrastructure, including technical capabilities, legislation and services for citizens.
BRICS Pay is also intended to facilitate payments for tourists travelling between participating countries, allowing them to use their domestic means of payment. Mikhaylishin said the platform could also support settlements between companies and banks.
“We do the two for B2B settlements. It's a new kind of architecture, fully decentralized architecture for the settlements between countries,” he said.
He further said BRICS Pay should not be viewed as a mechanism aimed at replacing the dollar, saying users would retain the flexibility to choose dollar-based payments if they wanted.
Looking ahead, Mikhaylishin said the platform's aim is to create a decentralised payment infrastructure that gives countries greater control over their financial systems while making cross-border payments easier for citizens.
“In my opinion, in the future, we will have fully decentralized infrastructure with sovereignty, more sovereignty in the financial means for the countries,” he said. (ANI)