BIS mulls ending mBridge pilot touted by Putin as dollar alternative: report

The Bank for International Settlements is considering ending its cross-border payments platform, which the Russian president sees as a tool to get around US sanctions.

The Bank for International Settlements is discussing the future of the mBridge cross-border payments project after Russian President Vladimir Putin flagged the technology as a potential tool to evade Western sanctions and challenge the dominance of the US dollar, Bloomberg has learned from sources close to the bank. Subject.

Sources stated that discussions on whether to close the project took place at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings held in Washington last week.

Designed to enable direct digital transfers between central banks without relying on US financial institutions, the mBridge project was developed within the scope of BIS’s Innovation Center with the participation of central banks in China, Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.

BIS has touted this initiative as a way to facilitate cross-border transactions and potentially bypass the existing dollar-centric global financial infrastructure.

BRICS members are hesitant about dollar alternative

At the Group of 30 event in Washington on 26 October, BIS director general Agustín Carstens emphasized: “We cannot directly support any projects for BRICS because we cannot work with countries subject to sanctions – I want to be very clear about this.”

Despite the dollar’s well-established role in global trade, Putin has advocated alternative systems. In his recent speech at the BRICS summit in Kazan, he proposed creating a “BRICS Bridge” network similar to mBridge to facilitate trade within the bloc without dependence on the dollar. Stating that this idea was met with mixed reactions from BRICS members, Bloomberg stated that countries such as India and South Africa stated that they were reluctant to disrupt the current global financial order.

Sources suggested that if BIS withdraws from mBridge, participating central banks could continue the project independently; but Western policymakers remain cautious about China’s influential role in the platform’s development and its potential to bypass established financial channels.