The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recently announced the expansion of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot program–more often referred to as the e-Rupee–to nine new cities. Five additional banks will also participate in the program, bringing the total number of banks involved to eight. The central bank began testing the e-rupee on retail clients in December of 2022.
India’s CBDC To Expand Further
The RBI has emphasized a gradual deployment of the e-rupee and is now providing the retail CBDC service to 50,000 customers on an invitation-only basis, with 5,000 of those users being merchants. With the number of transactions rising and the adoption process moving slowly and gradually, India’s central bank has expanded the pilot program for the e-rupee to nine further cities and five additional banks.
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According to the Deputy Governor of the RBI, T. Rabi Sankar, the transition to the e-rupee has been carried out without a hitch up to this point, and the volume of transactions has been steadily increasing, amounting to around 7.7 lakh rupees. On November 1, 2022, the RBI made the CBDC available for wholesale usage, and on the first of December, it became available for retail use.
e-Rupee Enters Next Stage
While the retail e-rupee is being piloted within a closed user group (CUG) consisting of participating customers and merchants, the wholesale CBDC can only be used for the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities. This restriction applies only to the wholesale CBDC and is expected to open up to other opportunities in stage two of its pilot.
During the initial stage of the pilot program, it included a total of participating four banks, viz. State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Subsequently, there have been plans for additional expansion to include four more banks, such as Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Currently, the CBDC is operational in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and Bengaluru. If one is to believe what industry experts are saying, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, and Pune are being anticipated to be the next line of cities to utilize the e-rupee. However, since the RBI has not released any definite news, these estimations should be treated with a grain of salt
By eliminating the requirement for settlement guarantee infrastructure or collateral to offset settlement risk, it is anticipated that the e-rupee will make the interbank market more efficient and bring down the costs of conducting transactions.
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