Offering an excellent overview of critical approaches to international payment systems, this open access volume re-introduces the contemporary relevance, origins and aims of the International Clearing Union (ICU), a concept associated with J. M. Keynes and with debates of continued contemporary importance to global political economy. This volume focuses on how ICU proposals interact with economic theory and normative principles of ethics and politics. It examines key contemporary political issues including de-dollarisation, development, overcoming nationalism, principles of fairness in trade and finance, commodity pricing, fixed vs. floating exchange rates, capital controls, the need for planning, and global public investments, as well as urgent issues of climate emergency and ecological breakdown. As such, this important volume provides a wide range of perspectives from both the Global North and Global South, as well as from different disciplines including politics, economics and political theory. ‘The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The University of Helsinki.