RBI to broaden digital rupee pilots, eyes cross-border use cases
What's the story
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced plans to expand its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots for both retail and wholesale segments.
The announcement was made in the RBI's Annual Report for 2024-25, released today.
The central bank said it will introduce new use cases and features for the digital rupee, building on existing pilot projects.
The digital rupee is a secure, efficient, and digital alternative to physical cash, offering benefits such as lower costs and enhanced transparency.
Infrastructure upgrade
RBI's vision for a modern financial infrastructure
As part of its efforts to modernize India's financial infrastructure, the RBI is looking at improvements to the account aggregator framework.
The proposed changes are aimed at enhancing transparency and improving customer service.
This move is part of a broader effort by the central bank to make financial data sharing more secure and efficient.
International expansion
RBI explores cross-border CBDC pilots
In a major development, the RBI is also looking at CBDC pilots for cross-border payments on both bilateral and multilateral bases.
This move indicates a push toward using the digital rupee for international settlements.
The first e₹-Wholesale pilot was launched in November 2022 while the e₹-Retail pilot started in December 2022 with select banks participating in controlled environments.
Wallet launches
Mobikwik and CRED launch e₹ wallets
Earlier this year, Mobikwik launched its full-scale CBDC wallet, e-rupee (e₹), in collaboration with the RBI and Yes Bank.
The wallet is available to all Android users for peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.
Users can make payments by scanning any UPI QR code as the wallet is fully compatible with Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
CRED also launched a beta program of the e₹ wallet in January with RBI and Yes Bank as sponsor bank.