Reserve Bank of India likely to bring in CBDC in call money market

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) aims to increase the number of central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions in the retail segment from 20,000-25,000 per day in July to 1 million by the end of December, according to official RBI sources. 

“The RBI is looking to expand the use of CBDC or e-rupee for a broader range of wholesale transactions. We are planning to use CBDC tokens for the call money market,” the official added. 

According to the official, there was no fixed date of closing the CBDC pilot as yet, since there was a need to fully understand the impact of digital currency on bank deposits and monetary policy. 

The central bank introduced the wholesale pilot for CBDC transactions for the government bond auctions last year. 

This comes a day after RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das stated that cross-border payments could be made more efficient via the adoption of digital currencies. 

CBDC has been able to gather 1.75 million users since its launch in 2022. “A token amount in CBDC will be given to delegates attending the G20 summit,” the official added. 

"We are confident of making RuPay a global product, and efforts are on to internationalise Unified Payments Interface as well,” sources aware of the developments indicated. 

On the issue of internationalisation of UPI, the officials said India was at various stages of negotiation and discussion with Latin American and African countries for its adoption. 

They highlighted that there was no push to promote Rupay debit cards and popularising RuPay has to be based on merits, and can't be done through regulatory measures,” the official said.