OREANDA-NEWS BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) create a single payment system, which will be called BRICS Pay. With its help it will be possible to pay for the purchase in any country of this group. The Russian direct investment Fund (RDIF) is the coordinator of the working group on financial services of the BRICS Business Council from Moscow.

"RDIF together with portfolio companies is actively involved in the development of the BRICS Pay project. Portfolio companies of RDIF, as well as partners of the Fund from China and India have the expertise and technologies necessary for the implementation of the project," the press service of the Fund told the newspaper. In addition, RDIF is ready to consider participation in the financing of BRICS Pay together with group partners.

One of the possible scenarios of the project is the creation of a special online wallet that will combine the payment systems of all countries of the Group . "Initially, the integration of payment systems will be implemented in the framework of creating a common platform for retail payments and transfers in BRICS countries", - have informed "news" the Vice-President of the party of the target working group of the BRICS Business Council Oleg Preksin. In practice, this will be implemented in the form of a smartphone application, where you can pay for your purchase in any BRICS country, regardless of the currency on the buyer's account. He noted that such a pilot project will start in South Africa in early April.

The overall purse will operate similarly to existing services, such as, for example, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay. To do this, a separate cloud platform will be created, which will link the national payment systems of the "five". Oleg Preksin added that it will be able to join other players. He noted that his colleagues in the BRICS Business Council task force supported his proposal to name the BRICS Pay service.

The press service of the Bank of Russia reported that they interact with the Central Banks of the BRICS countries, the SCO and the EAEU in the development of a single payment space, including in the integration of national payment card systems. "However, the issue of creating a single online wallet is not discussed yet," the Central Bank said. The National payment card system said that a discussion on this topic is underway, but the creation of a common online wallet with the organization was also not discussed. The Ministry of Finance also reported that such an initiative has not been received.

All BRICS countries except South Africa, have their own national payment systems. RuPay is in India, and ELO in Brazil, "MIR" - in Russia and UnionPay in China. The Indian system has issued 500 million national maps, Brazilian-120 million, Russian - 50 million, Chinese - more than 6 billion, according to official data on the websites of organizations.