Indian CBDC Pilot Expands To More Banks And Locations

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced in its annual report that it is expanding its ongoing pilot of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to more locations and more banks.

The central bank aims to incorporate more use cases and features to its national digital currency this year.

RBI includes more banks and locations for CBDC pilot

The Reserve bank said in its annual report that it introduced its CBDC in phases during the year, with the launch of pilots for Digital Rupee in the wholesale and retail segments on November 1, 2022 and December 1, 2022, respectively,” said RBI. “The pilots were preceded by issuance of a ‘Concept Note’ on CBDC to create awareness about CBDCs in general and the planned features of the digital currency in particular,” the central bank added. Now, the pilot in CBDC-Retail is proposed to be expanded to more locations and to include more participating banks.

The CBDC pilot project started with four banks including State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Later, four other banks were also included, namely Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Currently, five more banks, including Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Federal Bank, Axis Bank, and IndusInd Bank, are in the process of joining the pilot.

Indian digital currency to be available in more cities

The pilot of the retail CBDC was first introduced in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar, where customers and merchants were added to a closed user group (CUG) for its easy usage.

However, later on, more locations were added to the list, like Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna, and Shimla.

Read More: What is CBDC and Which Countries Will Use Digital Currency?