Amid the unity on show in the Russian city of Kazan this week, Brics leaders remained divided over the value of de-dollarisation - a geopolitical difference that could become starker as the bloc expands, analysts said.
By the time the summit wrapped on Thursday, the bloc's early members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - had welcomed Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates as full members.
In addition, 13 others had been invited to join as "partner countries", further expanding the Brics footprint.
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The players seemed to find common ground on areas such as cooperation on the environment, financial reform, and resolving global conflicts, with mentions from Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Xi and Putin were seen having a side discussion on Thursday, which ended in them shaking hands, sparking interest in the content of their discussion.
Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South Programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Brics nations appeared to be united on issues such as green protectionism and "paralysis" at the World Trade Organization.
Shidore said those were "clear criticisms of the United States" and reflected a fragmentation of the world not just in geopolitics, but also based on climate and the energy transition.
"These tendencies of fragmentation are being noted and increasingly being criticised in a forum like Brics," Shidore said.
But the unity did not carry through to Russia's proposal to unhitch the world's financial system from the US dollar.
Other nations may not like the US dollar's dominance in international trade, Shidore said, but "when they look at the cost-benefit analysis of going full-speed ahead and creating an alternative, there are all kinds of barriers, internal, geopolitical, technical, and of course the fear of strong US retaliation".
Moscow has been promoting an alternative payment system for international trade, called the Brics Bridge, to overcome some of the financial barriers thrown up by Western-led sanctions triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Those barriers include being cut off from Swift - the main international payment messaging platform used for settlements.
In Kazan on Thursday, Putin said "it is essential to build alternative multilateral financial mechanisms and supply chains that are reliable and free from any dictate".