The Reserve Bank Of India Mulling Over Launching Retail CBDC Trial In December

The Reserve Bank of India is in the concluding stage of preparing the rollout of the retail digital rupee trial, according to the Economic Times of India. The participants in the trial include the State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, HDFC Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Purportedly, at some point, the pilot is going to include all the commercial banks in the nation.

Each bank taking part in the trial will test the central bank digital currency among ten thousand to fifty thousand users. In order to integrate the new payment option, the banks will join forces with PayNearby and Bankit platforms. The central bank digital currency infrastructure will be held by the National Payments Corporation of India.

As the anonymous source specified to Indian journalists:

“The e-rupee will be stored in a wallet, the denominations will be available as per the customer’s request, just like you request cash from an ATM. Banks are launching this only in select cities.”

The wholesale segment trial for the digital rupee was launched by the Reserve Bank of India on 1st November. Its primary use case has been the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities. Nevertheless, no information on the successful ending of the wholesale pilot is available at press time.