The State Bank of India (SBI) and Canara Bank are among the thirteen banks that are helping the RBI with these trials.
After going through four months of retail trials, the Indian central bank’s digital currency, eRupee, reportedly processed transactions totaling Rs. 5.70 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the data in response to an RTI request made by Moneycontrol. On December 1, 2022, the RBI began eRupee retail trials in a few different locations around the nation.
“As per the data published in the balance sheet of the Reserve Bank of India as on March 31, 2023, the E-Rupee issued for CBDC (Retail) at Rs 5.70 crore,” the central bank reportedly said responding to Moneycontrol’s RTI query last month.
A digital form of sovereign money based on blockchain technology is called a CBDC. In addition to lowering dependency on paper money, using CBDCs in place of cash would guarantee that every transaction is documented on a distributed ledger, protecting the data from manipulation.
The State Bank of India (SBI) and Canara Bank are among the thirteen banks that are helping the RBI with these trials. In addition, these banks provided incentives and benefits to users testing the eRupee, assisting the RBI in reaching its goal of one million daily transactions by the end of 2023.
Now that a number of Indian banks are allowing customers to test out eRupee payments, the RBI intends to add more features to the currency in the upcoming months.
The governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Shaktikanta Das, informed the media last week that the eRupee CBDC will be equipped with programmability features for corporate use and features that support offline payments for rural areas.
On social networking sites, Web3 sector players in India offered their opinions on the state of affairs. In his post on X Friday, Nischal Shetty, the CEO of WazirX and the co-founder of the recently established cryptocurrency futures exchange Pi42, expressed his excitement about the RBI’s plans for the CBDC.
“This is a great move to further grow the CBDC adoption and bring new use cases to the end users,” Shetty said. “If there’s a way to bridge this CBDC over to decentralized blockchains then we might see INR integrating into DeFi. This will help INR get stronger which would be a net positive for India,” he added. Members of Web3 community also took to X to comment on India’s CBDC plans.
According to a survey done in July of last year by the CFA Institute (Chartered Financial Analyst), respondents in the Asia-Pacific area were more open to the idea of CBDCs, particularly those who were younger.
“Financial inclusion and financial stability constitute two of the key motivations driving interest in CBDCs across the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the rapid rise and sudden fall of private cryptocurrencies have sparked interest in CBDCs,” the report had noted.
India is not the only country focusing on its CBDCs; the UK, China, Japan, and South Korea are also involved.
