The greenback in danger? Before concretely addressing the issues of the new payment platform for those called BRCIS+, it is appropriate to recall an essential point which will allow us to qualify the rest of this presentation. Indeed, as recalled Irina Dezhina, Russian-American researcher at Stanford University and speaker at IFRI (French Institute of International Relations), the BRICS+ “constitute an informal platform without common rules or statutes” which present a “significant heterogeneity of economic development and scientific or technological capacity”.
Despite all the fantasies fueled by this alliance between Russia, India, China and more than 10 formerly emerging powers, what we call Sud Global is far from being united and faces very marked divergences of interests. It is not tomorrow that all these little people will stand up as one man against the West and trample the greenback, but clear messages are being sent to America's allies and we can see a clear change in the speeches. leaders of BRICS+ countries who no longer hide their ambitions. Now let's see what they're up to.
BRCIS+ weigh more and more heavily in the global economy
As we can read on the website of BRICS Paythe 10 countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Iran represent 34% of the surface of the Earth, 37% of global growth, 45% of the population, 40% of industrial production and 45% of wheat harvests. An alliance of such magnitude is bound to worry the OECD countries and, first of all, theUncle Sam.
If one day these countries were to establish privileged agreements between themselves and do without relations with Europe, the United States and its alliesthis would inevitably create a shift in the center of gravity of global economic activity eastward and southward. However, after decades of civilized discourse, the time has come for the movement to accelerate.
Russia is obliged to find an alternative to current systems
Because since the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the country of Vladimir Poutine is subject to economic sanctions which, far from weakening it, have on the contrary strengthened it politically by pushing it to develop alternative diplomatic networks. Deprived of its outlets to Europe, the Russians sell their oil to India (which also resells it to Europe, but that's another subject) and deprived of Swiftthey are looking to set up another payment system.
BRICS Pay therefore acts as a Plan B for Russia and its ad hoc allies who are seeking in fact to do without the dollar and build an autonomous financial ecosystem where the local currencies of these countries would replace the greenback. And even if it is far from being operational today, the promises of the entire system level are revolutionary.
BRICS PAY is a tool that could work quickly and benefit its users
First of all, it is a digital wallet that can be linked to national bank accounts, making it a tool that is intended to be simple to use and easy to integrate into the existing system. Then, like crypto payment applications, the BRICS Pay will work using a QR payment code to, once again, simplify its use.
As discussed above, it will be based on the local currencies of the countries that use it, eliminating the need for dollars for hundreds of millions of people and avoiding costly exchange fees. With this accessibility to as many people as possible, it could quickly find its place in users' homes, even calling into question the banking systems of countries that adopt it!
If these 10 countries get organized, it could change the face of the world
Finally, if this BRICS Pay manages to see the light of day and become democratized it would quite simply be a revolution in the economic world by creating an openly multipolar world where the United States would definitively lose its leadership. For now, all these countries have very different financial systems, some are even testing and experimenting with central bank digital currencies which could further complicate a possible transition to a global system.
So as our IFRI researcher said, all this is more than hypothetical and between the individual interests of each country, the volatility of all these national currencies and probably the intensive lobbying of the United States to prevent this from happening. , the BRICS Pay is far from calling into question the all-powerful power of the greenback. But imagine for a second if he got there, it would be an event that could change the face of the world.
