New Delhi, Sept. 12 -- BRICS leaders have called for practical solutions to make cross-border payments among member countries faster, cheaper, more accessible and safer, while backing greater interoperability between national payment and messaging systems as the grouping seeks to deepen economic cooperation.

The call was made in the New Delhi Declaration adopted at the 18th BRICS Summit, which encouraged the BRICS Payment Task Force (BPTF) to continue work on cross-border payment mechanisms, building on the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative outlined in earlier Kazan and Rio declarations.

The declaration said the task force has been studying the cross-border interoperability of payment and messaging channels and discussions on promo...