The five-nation BRICS group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will work on creating a payment system based on blockchain and digital technologies, a report by Russian news agency TASS said.

“We believe that creating an independent BRICS payment system is an important goal for the future, which would be based on state-of-the-art tools such as digital technologies and blockchain. The main thing is to make sure it is convenient for governments, common people and businesses, as well as cost-effective and free of politics,” Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said in an interview with TASS.

The effort is part of a specific task for this year to increase the role of BRICS in the international monetary system. For some time now, the BRICS grouping has been making efforts to reduce its reliance on U.S. dollars in settlement, also known as de-dollarization.

“Work will continue to develop the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, primarily regarding the use of currencies different from the US dollar,” Ushakov said.

Last week, another TASS report said Russia’s Finance Ministry, the Bank of Russia and BRICS partners will create the BRICS Bridge multisided payment platform in an effort to improve the global monetary system.

Also in February, Klaas Knot, the Chair of the Financial Stability Board, which keeps an eye on the global financial system, wrote to finance ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) countries that crypto assets, tokenization and artificial intelligence (AI) remain priorities.