Ajit Karn
The Reserve Bank of India said on Wednesday that five other banks would join the e-rupee pilot for retail clients and the experiment will be expanded to nine further locations.
The Reserve Bank of India, which began piloting the central bank digital currency or e-rupee for retail customers with eight banks in five cities at the beginning of December, emphasised that it favours a moderate and steady adoption rather than a rush.
The CBDC is now accessible to just 50,000 users, of which 5,000 are merchants. Currently, eight banks in five cities offer the service on an invitation-only basis, deputy governor T Rabi Sankar told reporters on Wednesday at the annual post-policy news conference.
Sankar stated that five other banks will soon be added to the platform and the number of cities where the pilot service is now accessible will be increased from five to nine.
“Having said this and the possibility of being correct, I will emphasise that we want the process to occur. However, we want the process to occur gently and gradually. We are not in a rush to make things happen rapidly.
“We have goals in terms of users, merchants, and everything else. “However, we will go cautiously because we do not want to act without comprehending the potential consequences,” the lieutenant governor explained.
Regarding the amount of transactions, he stated that it is expanding gradually and has only totaled approximately Rs. 7.7 lakh to far.
On November 1 and December 1, 2022, respectively, the RBI launched the CBDC for wholesale and retail. While the wholesale CBDC use case is confined to the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities, the retail e-rupee is being tested inside a closed user group (CUG) of participating customers and merchants.
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The initial phase consists of four banks: State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Afterwards, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank also joined.
The CBDC is anticipated to make the interbank market more efficient, and e-rupee settlements can lower transaction costs by eliminating the need for settlement guarantee infrastructure or collateral to offset settlement risk.
