Why have the New Development Bank (NDB),established by the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), both created by emerging economies, taken different operational institutions? The NDB has adopted a borrowing country-oriented operational modality, while the AIIB’s operational modality is still donor country-oriented. This article examines the structural factors leading to the creation of these new banks and different institutional proposals during the establishment negotiation processes to explain the operational differences. In the establishment of NDB, the competition between India and China for leadership made the principle of equality a basic feature of the bank. All the founding members are the borrowing countries. The NDB is a borrowing country-oriented new multilateral development bank (MDB) with equal shareholding and the use of country systems as two prominent institutional innovations. In the case of AIIB, after being joined by non-regional European powers, China pushed it toward an internationalized and high standards approach, in the face of political pressure toward multilateralism, especially from the European founding members, and market pressure from the international credit rating agencies in America. As a result the AIIB was similar to existing MDBs in terms of operational modality. This research shows the different institutional approaches to participation in global economic governance for emerging economies.