Digital Rupee: RBI launches expand e-Rupee pilot to include more banks

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) wants to expand the ongoing pilot of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and incorporate various use cases and features in 2023-24. 

In its annual report for 2022-2023, the central bank said, "During 2023-24, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) aims at expanding the ongoing pilots in CBDC-Retail and CBDC-Wholesale by incorporating various use cases and features."

“Taking forward digitisation efforts announced in the Union Budget 2022-23, the Reserve Bank introduced its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in phases during the year, with the launch of pilots for Digital Rupee (e`) in the wholesale and retail segments on November 1, 2022 and December 1, 2022, respectively,” said RBI.

“The pilots were preceded by issuance of a ‘Concept Note’ on CBDC to create awareness about CBDCs in general and the planned features of e` in particular,” it added.

Digital Rupee, the RBI CBDC is an electronic form of sovereign currency. The central bank proposed to issue two versions of the Digital Rupee, i.e., CBDC-Wholesale (CBDC-W) and CBDC-Retail (CBDC-R). CBDC-Wholesale is for restricted access to select financial institutions while CBDC-Retail can be used by all including the private sector, non-financial consumers, and businesses.

The pilot programme of wholesale Digital Rupee segment started on November 1, 2022. The use case for this pilot is the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities (G-secs).

The first pilot for CBDC-Retail was announced on December 1, 2022. The retail e-Rupee has been launched in denominations of 50 paise, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 2000, while wholesale e-Rupee does not envisage any denomination.