Indian Central Bank Aims to Hit 1 Million CBDC Users By End of June 2023

After the monetary policy announcements on Thursday, June 8, T Rabi Shankar, the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the central bank is planning to achieve the milestone of one million users of the central bank digital currency aka Digital Rupee.

Note that the RBI is still conducting the pilot test for Digital Rupee and doesn’t have a specific timeline on when to go live with the CBDC usage pan India. Shankar said that this would be a “gradual and calibrated” change that will focus majorly on internalizing learnings with the growing use of CBDCs.

On November 1 of last year, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) introduced a digital version of the rupee specifically for large-scale transactions. One month later on December 1, they conducted the first test of a digital rupee for regular people.

The pilot program for the CBDC began in four cities – Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar – with a select group of customers and merchants. It gradually expanded to other cities like Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna, and Shimla.

Also, at first, only the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, YES Bank, and IDFC First Bank were involved in the CBDC project. Later on, the Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank also joined in.

Bringing CBDC Digital Rupee to UPI

As per the deputy governor of the RBI, Mint Road is planning to make CBDC QR codes interoperable with India’s very successful Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI enables digital banking transactions, allowing recipients to receive payments through debit or credit cards, internet banking, or mobile wallets.

In India, UPI has become extremely popular, with QR code scanning being the widely utilized feature for payments between individuals or merchants. On the other hand, the beneficiary of CBDC can draw the digital currency and keep it secure in a wallet.

When one transfers the CBDC from an individual or a shop, it will move from wallet to wallet without any intermediation of the bank.