Cross-border Transactions: Challenges and Possible Solutions for BRICS

The article critically examines the idea of a supranational accounting and settlement unit of BRICS. The theoretical and historical excursion brings us closer to understanding the nature of modern money and leads to the conclusion about the reasons why the national fiat unit serves as a means of international liquidity. The experience of European monetary integration is analyzed through the prism of the theory of the optimal currency area. The bottlenecks of international settlements and possible infrastructural solutions based on a central bank digital currency or multilateral clearing are considered. It is proved that multilateral clearing is an effective means of addressing the challenges in cross-border settlements, while the solutions leading to currency integration are possible only if the economic benefits exceed the damage to national monetary sovereignty.