Geneva - Nine central banks have joined the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems to raise its numbers to 23 members, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) announced Friday.

The grouping is a forum to monitor and analyse developments in domestic payment, clearing and settlement systems as well as in cross-border and multi-currency settlement schemes, according to the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS, which hosts the committee secretariat.

The new central banks to join are: Australia, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and South Korea.

They join the existing membership, which consists of: Belgium, Canada, the European Central Bank, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and the United States.

The expansion would help contribute to financial stability through improvements to the global payments and settlement infrastructure, the BIS said in a statement.

"The expansion will also help the committee keep oversight practices and standards in line with market developments and with increasing interdependencies among financial market infrastructures," the statement said.

The chairman of the committee is William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (dpa)