Russia Ready to Test Payments in Digital Currencies With China, EAEU.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russia will promote the topic of improving the BRICS settlement and payment system and is ready to test payments in digital currencies with China, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Gulf countries, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told Sputnik.

“The agenda that we will promote within the framework of our chairmanship is the improvement of the financial, settlement and payment system, which, in the current conditions of fragmentation, would be convenient and safe for trade participants within the BRICS. The system [that will be] outside of politics, independent of Western unfriendly infrastructure,” Siluanov said.

Siluanov noted that financial technologies are actively developing and provide a wide range of tools, including for the formation of an innovative payment and settlement infrastructure.

“It is proposed creating a platform that would connect the financial systems of its participants. For example, technological gateways for settlements in digital currencies of central banks are already in operation. We propose creating a BRICS Bridge system, which, based on the BRICS institutions, would be available to our countries and would ensure the proper level of equality and would contribute to the development of trade relations … We are ready to start [testing] with countries that express such a desire. Perhaps with China, perhaps with our neighbors in the EAEU, with the countries of the Persian Gulf,” the minister added.