The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to expand its digital currency pilot to include cross-border payments, government benefit transfers, and domestic retail, according to its annual report for FY26 released on Friday.
The central bank also intends to launch bilateral central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots and explore the tokenization of financial assets to widen the e-Rupee's reach. It said in the annual report that it intends to operationalise bilateral central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots with select use cases and deepen engagement in multilateral projects.
Mint reported in March that Instant money transfers between India and the UAE may be a reality soon, with the central banks of both countries working to link their sovereign digital currencies. The move is significant since the UAE, home to more than four million Indians, is among the top sources of remittances to India.
More than eight million Indians currently use the e-Rupee, with 120 million transactions valued at ₹28,000 crore conducted by December 2025 since its 2022 launch, RBI data showed. While retail CBDC can be used to pay individuals and merchants, wholesale use cases include interbank settlements and large-value transactions. Data on wholesale transactions is not readily available.
During 2025-26, the RBI said it undertook several initiatives such as launching multiple CBDC pilots under direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes of the central and state governments, leveraging the programmability of digital currencies.
“In Gujarat, Puducherry and Chandigarh, public distribution system (PDS) beneficiaries were credited food subsidy through programmable CBDC, redeemable for eligible commodities at fair price shops/ identified merchants,” it said.
Talks with Singapore, UAE
On cross-border payments, the RBI said it signed an agreement on digital asset collaboration with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It also held discussions with MAS and the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) to operationalise a cross-border CBDC pilot.
The RBI has been pushing the use of CBDC as an alternative to stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to a steady asset, like the US dollar or gold, to keep its value from fluctuating wildly.
In December 2025, then deputy governor T. Rabi Sankar said at a Mint event that stablecoins offer no real benefit over regular government currency, which performs the same functions more effectively. Sankar had said that much of the appeal of stablecoins lies in their promise of cheaper, faster international transfers, but the same efficiency can be achieved through bilateral or multilateral CBDC corridors.