The architecture of post-dollar trade – and what that means
Peter McGahan
Monday, 14th April, 2025.
PART Three in our series: The Global Shift Away from the US Dollar.
You can have all the water in the world, but if the pipes are clogged or run through someone else’s tap, good luck getting a clean wine glass mate. That’s what we’re seeing now with global finance. The water - money - isn’t the only story anymore. It’s the pipes: how it flows, who controls the taps, and what happens when someone upstream decides to turn off the supply.
Enter Project mBridge - the most ambitious plumbing project in modern finance.
Think of mBridge as the world’s first serious attempt to build a financial waterway that doesn’t flow through the US dollar.
Launched with China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE, mBridge is a shared digital platform for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). It allows countries to make cross-border payments directly without relying on SWIFT, CHIPS, or the dollar.
The result? Instant, cheap, transparent international payments - using your own currency, not someone else’s.
That means no correspondent banks, no conversion fees, and crucially, no need to touch the dollar or pass through US financial channels. If you’re a country which has ever been on the sharp end of sanctions or trade restrictions, this is financial sovereignty on a microchip. (You might understand some of the geopolitical uneasiness at the moment).
Until now, the dollar wasn’t just the world's main currency, it was also the global tollbooth. You want to buy oil? You paid in dollars. You want to send money overseas? You passed through SWIFT, where US regulators could watch or block your transaction. This gave the US enormous leverage. Sanctions weren’t just diplomatic - they were financial handcuffs.
But mBridge changes that. It enables what’s called 'atomic settlement' - transactions which complete instantly and irrevocably without US banks or regulators even knowing they happened.
That might sound technical. But for countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, it’s revolutionary. These are nations frozen out of the global dollar system. With
mBridge and CBDCs, they can still trade, pay, and get paid, just through a different set of pipes.
Let’s be clear, mBridge isn’t just about fast payments. It’s about rebuilding the architecture of global trade, with China at the centre.
The digital yuan (e-CNY) is already being used in pilot oil trades with Saudi Arabia and plugged into China’s Belt and Road projects. The goal isn’t to kill the dollar overnight, but to build an alternative which doesn’t rely on it.
This includes programmable money. CBDCs can be coded to include tariffs, discounts, or tax logic. Imagine a trade deal where you automatically get a subsidy if you import green energy tech, or where your money can’t be spent outside your region without permission.
That’s monetary policy, foreign policy, and economic planning, embedded in the money itself.
In 2022, mBridge ran a live pilot with 20 commercial banks across China, the UAE, Hong Kong, and Thailand. They made real payments in real currencies, without using dollars. The verdict? It worked. Fast, cheap, transparent and viable.
Now, mBridge is expanding. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Pakistan - countries far from Wall Street’s influence are exploring how to plug in.
As economist Michael Hudson puts it, the end of dollar dominance might not come with a bang, but with a straight 'bypass'.
mBridge and CBDCs don’t need to overthrow the dollar. They just need to offer a working alternative. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
A bit like email replacing fax machines, not because faxes failed, but because something better came along. The dollar won’t vanish tomorrow or soon, but its monopoly on trust, speed, and infrastructure is already fading.
For investors, policymakers, and curious readers, this is a moment to watch. If mBridge scales, and early signs suggest it will, it could trigger a slow but steady fracturing of global finance into blocs.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, (original BRICS, now expanded to include South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Ethiopia) might settle in their own currencies. Africa may build its own digital currency corridor. Even the West may be forced to rethink its reliance on a 20th-century system in a 21st-century world.
The money is changing. But more importantly, so are the pipes.
If you have a financial question, please call 01872 222422 or email info@wwfp.net
Peter McGahan is the Chief Executive Officer of Independent Financial Adviser Worldwide Financial Planning. Worldwide Financial Planning is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
