The administration of the Reserve Bank of India announced its intention to increase the number of transactions in the central bank digital currency to one million per day in 2023.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is promoting the electronic rupee in the local financial market as a digital alternative to physical money and unregulated crypto-currency assets, which are gaining great popularity among the country’s citizens.
RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar said that as of June 2023, the Indian CBDC is already used by about 1.3 million private customers and is accepted for payments by approximately 300,000 merchants.
However, the central bank is not satisfied with the dynamics of introducing CBDC into the country’s economy, so the regulator intends to prepare a special strategy that encourages commercial companies and the country’s population to use the digital rupee.
“We will promote the state digital currency not only as a payment instrument, but also as digital money, the biggest advantage of which will be in cross-border transactions. We will focus on ensuring the security and anonymity of transactions in CBDC,” Sankar assured.
The Deputy Governor of the RBI clarified that the administration of the regulator does not set an exact date for the full launch of the digital rupee, and also intends to make the platform of the single payment interface (UPI) fully compatible with the CBDC.
“We are not setting a specific date, but we want to evaluate the results and learn as we implement. By the end of the year, we are aiming for 1 million transactions per day. We also plan to make the UPI QR code CBDC compatible,” the official announced.
Earlier, the Reserve Bank of India announced that it is expanding the retail digital rupee pilot project to include several more commercial banks and cities.
