India and Russia ditch U.S. Dollar

India and Russia are ditching the US dollar in their trade relationship.

BRICS members are putting their national payment systems, RuPay and MIR, to work. This will reportedly make cross-border transactions smoother between them.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India met with Russian officials in Moscow. They discussed integrating RuPay and MIR for trade.

Modi confirmed India’s openness to using these systems for transactions with Russia, after rejecting the idea of de-dollarization before. Though he did say it was China’s yuan he wasn’t cool with using.

This decision will benefit both India and Russia. They will use their local currencies, saving millions in exchange rates.

Andrey Kostin, CEO of Russia’s VTB Bank, spoke about this during a press conference.

“We must develop our own settlement system that includes the global south enabling us to conduct transactions in our own national currencies and not the US dollar.”