Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
BRICS Payments 2026: Yuan Settlement, mBridge, and the De-dollarization Scorecard
Local-currency settlement is rising at the margins, but the dollar still anchors global finance. We score the actual progress on yuan internationalization, the mBridge CBDC pilot, and bilateral payment rails through 2028.
BRICS-aligned economies have spent four years building parallel payment infrastructure: CIPS for yuan clearing, mBridge for CBDC settlement, and a thicket of bilateral local-currency arrangements from Brasilia to New Delhi to Abu Dhabi. The headline numbers look dramatic, with CIPS volumes up sharply and the dollar share of allocated rese...
BRICS+ Payments After mBridge: Plumbing Without a Pipeline
The Kazan declaration promised a parallel financial architecture, yet 18 months on the BRICS+ rail is a patchwork of bilateral corridors, while the dollar still clears 47 percent of SWIFT traffic and anchors 58 percent of allocated reserves.
BRICS+ leaders left Kazan in October 2024 with a communique that name-checked BRICS Pay, a cross-border depository called BRICS Clear, and local-currency settlement, but stopped short of any unified currency. Days later the BIS Innovation Hub announced its withdrawal from Project mBridge, leaving China, the HKMA, Thailand, the UAE, and Sa...