BRICS vs USD: Global Reserves in 2026

The BRICS vs USD conversation has shifted. What was once a topic reserved for dinner party speculation and geopolitical commentary is now grounded in measurable, quarter-over-quarter data. The US dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency, but its share of global reserves, transaction volumes, and trade settlement is contracting at a pace that demands attention from anyone involved in cross-border payments infrastructure.

George Yeo, the former Foreign Minister of Singapore, captured the underlying dynamic plainly:

“The very actions of the US are causing the momentum for de-dollarization to increase. I’m quite sure that among the big countries, China, Russia, and others, especially those in BRICS, there will be a push for an alternative system. Not to replace the current system, but to tell the US, ‘Look, don’t overplay this, because if you do, we have an alternative.’ It’s not as good, but we won’t be hostage to the current system.”

George Yeo, Former Foreign Minister of Singapore

That alternative is no longer theoretical. It is being built, tested, and deployed.

Is There Actually a BRICS Currency?

The short answer: no. Despite widespread search interest in a “BRICS currency” and even queries about its price, there is no unified BRICS currency that exists as a tradeable asset. No central bank has issued one. No exchange lists one.

What does exist is a series of mechanisms designed to reduce dependence on the US dollar in cross-border trade and reserves. These include bilateral currency swap agreements between member states, the mBridge cross-border CBDC platform, and a pilot initiative known as “The Unit” - a proposed trade settlement instrument backed 40% by gold and 60% by a basket of BRICS member currencies, trialed on the Cardano blockchain with an initial issuance of 100 units.

The Unit is an infrastructure experiment, not a currency. Its reserve value declined from 100 grams of gold equivalent to 98.23 grams by December 2025, reflecting the volatility inherent in its underlying basket. It has not been adopted for mainstream trade settlement.

The distinction matters. When people search for “BRICS currency price,” they are looking for something that does not yet exist in tradeable form. What is happening instead - bilateral settlement in national currencies, central bank gold accumulation, and alternative payment infrastructure - is arguably more consequential than a single currency would be. For a deeper analysis of the gold-backed currency proposals, see An Unforeseen Challenge for the Global Currency Landscape.

When Will a BRICS Currency Launch?

There is no confirmed launch date for a unified BRICS currency - and the political barriers suggest one may never materialize in the form most people expect.

At the 2023 Johannesburg summit, expectations ran high that BRICS would announce a common currency. It did not happen. The 2024 Kazan summit produced further discussion but no concrete timeline. India, the bloc’s second-largest economy by purchasing power parity, has been explicit: New Delhi has “no policy to replace the dollar” and has resisted proposals that would subordinate the rupee to a shared currency controlled partly by Beijing.

The practical obstacle is straightforward. BRICS+ now comprises 11 full members with vastly different monetary policies, inflation rates, capital account regimes, and political systems. The eurozone took decades to align a smaller group of more economically similar nations around a single currency - and even then, the result has been contentious.

What is more likely - and what is already happening - is not a unified currency but a network of settlement mechanisms that reduce dollar dependence without requiring members to surrender monetary sovereignty. These include:

• mBridge - a cross-border CBDC platform processing real transactions between central banks
• CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System) - China’s alternative to SWIFT, now connecting 1,829 participants across 130 countries
• Bilateral swap lines - direct currency exchange agreements that bypass the dollar entirely
• BRICS Pay - a consumer-facing payment network targeted for deployment at the September 2026 New Delhi summit

The question is not whether BRICS will launch a single currency. It is whether the network of bilateral and multilateral settlement tools now being deployed will erode the dollar’s role as the default intermediary in global trade. The data suggests that process is already well underway. For a comparison of alternative payment systems, see Beyond Dollars: The Diversification of Payment Systems.

The Reserve Currency Data

The numbers tell a clear story. According to the IMF’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER), the US dollar’s share of allocated global reserves fell to 56.77% in Q4 2025 - the lowest level since 1995. This is a structural decline, not a quarterly fluctuation; the dollar’s share has fallen roughly 10 percentage points over the past two decades.

The transaction data reinforces the trend. SWIFT currency tracking data shows the dollar’s share of global payment transactions at 50.5% in December 2025 - still dominant but well below the 60%+ levels of a decade earlier. The Chinese yuan’s share rose to 3.13% in January 2026, up from 2.73% in December 2025, continuing a steady climb for a currency that barely registered on the platform a decade ago.

These are not abstract indicators. They reflect real decisions by central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and institutional treasuries to hold and transact in a broader basket of currencies.

De-Dollarization in Practice: What the Data Shows

Moving past the debate about whether de-dollarization is real, the data points to a measurable, multi-track shift.

Reserve Composition Shift

The IMF COFER data reveals a structural reallocation:

Currency	Q4 2025 Share	Change (5-Year)	Direction
US Dollar (USD)	56.77%	-4.1pp	Declining
Euro (EUR)	19.75%	-0.6pp	Stable/declining
Chinese Yuan (CNY)	2.69%	+0.7pp	Growing
Gold (as % of reserves)	~30%	+17pp since 2017	Accelerating

Source: IMF COFER, World Gold Council

The yuan’s share remains small in absolute terms, but its growth trajectory and gold’s dramatic rise as a reserve asset are the defining trends. Central banks are not replacing the dollar with any single alternative - they are diversifying into a basket that includes the yuan, gold, and other currencies.

Settlement Volume Shift

SWIFT data tracks the dollar’s declining share of payment transactions, while bilateral trade settlement in national currencies is expanding rapidly:

• China-Russia bilateral trade: 99.1% settled in national currencies (yuan and rouble), a complete structural shift from pre-2022 patterns
• Middle East non-dollar settlement: grew from 18% to 31% of regional cross-border transactions between December 2025 and March 2026
• Intra-ASEAN local currency settlement: now above 25% of trade, up from less than 10% in 2019

Gold as Reserve Anchor

The World Gold Council’s full-year 2025 report confirms that central banks purchased between 863 and 1,237 tonnes in 2025, marking the third consecutive year of purchases above 1,000 tonnes. BRICS+ nations now hold more than 6,000 tonnes of gold - representing 17.4% of global central bank reserves, up from 11.2% in 2019.

The pattern is consistent: accumulate gold, build non-dollar settlement infrastructure, and reduce dependence on SWIFT. Each reinforces the other.

BRICS+ Expansion and Economic Weight

The bloc driving much of this shift has grown considerably. BRICS+ now comprises 11 full members: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the UAE. An additional 10 nations hold partner status.

The combined economic weight is difficult to ignore. BRICS+ members represent over 40% of global GDP on a purchasing power parity basis, 48.5% of the world’s population, and roughly 50% of global oil production. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia in recent expansion rounds was not incidental - it brought the world’s largest energy producers and one of Southeast Asia’s largest economies into a bloc that now has the scale to build parallel financial infrastructure.

Yeo’s observation on the underlying motivation remains apt:

“The US has 800 military bases around the world. Who is funding those bases? US taxpayers, maybe some others. But the US can print money, and when they print money to finance military bases, in a sense, all of us, in Singapore, in China, and in Europe, are being taxed to finance the security the US provides.”

George Yeo, Former Foreign Minister of Singapore

That implicit tax is precisely what BRICS+ members are seeking to reduce.

The Infrastructure: mBridge and BRICS Pay

De-dollarization requires more than political will; it requires settlement infrastructure. Two projects are building it.

mBridge, the cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, has surged past $55.5 billion in cumulative transaction volume across more than 4,000 transactions. Participating central banks include Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and mainland China. The digital yuan accounts for approximately 95% of settlement volume on the platform. Notably, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) exited the mBridge project in October 2024, a move widely interpreted as a response to Western concerns about the platform’s potential to circumvent dollar-based settlement systems.

BRICS Pay, the bloc’s consumer-facing payment network, is targeted for deployment at the September 2026 New Delhi summit. If delivered on schedule, it would create a direct payment corridor between BRICS+ member nations that bypasses SWIFT entirely. For detailed analysis of BRICS Pay and its fintech implications, see Synergy or Strife: BRICS Pay, FinTech, and the Path Forward.

These are not pilot programs. They are operational infrastructure projects backed by central banks representing nearly half the world’s population.

Regional De-Dollarization Hotspots

The shift is not uniform, but regional patterns are accelerating.

China-Russia bilateral trade has moved almost entirely off the dollar. According to official figures, 99.1% of trade between the two countries is now settled in national currencies - the yuan and the rouble. This is a complete structural shift from pre-2022 patterns, when the dollar dominated Sino-Russian trade settlement.

Middle East non-dollar settlement grew from 18% to 31% of regional cross-border transactions between December 2025 and March 2026. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in BRICS+ has accelerated this trend, particularly in energy contracts that were historically denominated exclusively in dollars.

Asia non-dollar settlement is expanding rapidly, with intra-ASEAN local currency settlement now above 25% of trade, up from less than 10% in 2019. Bilateral currency swap agreements - facilitated through central banks including the Reserve Bank of India - between ASEAN nations, China, and India are accelerating this shift.

Yeo identified this dynamic clearly when he noted the resentment generated by the weaponization of dollar-based systems:

“You are saying that your enemy, who was an old friend, must now be my enemy, and people resent it.”

George Yeo, Former Foreign Minister of Singapore

That resentment is now translating into infrastructure.

Central Bank Gold Accumulation

Alongside currency diversification, central banks are accumulating gold at a historic pace. The largest holders among BRICS+ nations are Russia (2,336 tonnes), China (2,298 tonnes), and India (880 tonnes).

Gold’s share of total global reserves has risen to approximately 30% in 2025, up from 13% in 2017. This is not a speculative trade. Central banks are systematically reducing dollar exposure and replacing it with an asset that carries no counterparty risk and cannot be frozen by sanctions.

For institutions looking to align infrastructure with this central bank trend, fractionalized precious metals ownership offers a practical entry point - investment-grade bullion, accessible from $10, with institutional custody and 24/7 liquidity. See also: What Is Gold Tokenization? How Physical Bullion Goes Digital.

What This Means for Cross-Border Finance

For fintech platforms, payment service providers, and institutions operating across multiple jurisdictions, these shifts have practical implications. Multi-currency settlement infrastructure is no longer a convenience - it is becoming a necessity for any business with exposure to BRICS+ economies, commodity markets, or cross-border trade flows.

Aerapass is licensed across multiple jurisdictions including Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Canada, with multi-currency corridors built into its exchange infrastructure and cross-border payment capabilities spanning 120+ countries. As reserve diversification accelerates and non-dollar settlement volumes grow, the ability to hold, convert, and settle across currency pairs without friction becomes a core operational requirement.

Yeo summarized the broader trajectory in terms that apply equally to sovereign reserve managers and cross-border payment platforms:

“I’m surprised that, in the last few months, at every dinner and social gathering, people talk about de-dollarization. This is not good for the US.”

George Yeo, Former Foreign Minister of Singapore

The alternative, as Yeo noted, “is not perfect, but it’s better than being hostage to a system that is increasingly weaponized.”

The data suggests the world agrees.