India’s central bank is considering adding new features to the digital rupee, including cross-border payment capabilities, according to a recent report
The Reserve Bank of India intends to deploy new functionalities for the digital rupee and evaluate its effectiveness in cross-border payments with international partners.
The Central Bank of India has announced that it will implement new features and use cases for the digital rupee’s cross-border usage, potentially indicating a transition to its international adoption.
The Reserve Bank of India’s Annual Report for 2024-25 contained the update, which stated that the subsequent phase of development would be informed by the lessons learned from the extant pilots, according to CNBC TV18.
In November 2022, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated the wholesale digital rupee pilot, which the retail pilot succeeded in December 2022.
The report indicates that the RBI investigates CBDC pilots for cross-border payments on “bilateral and multilateral bases.” However, the specifics of the new use cases have not been disclosed.
The report indicates that the value of the digital rupee in circulation increased by 334% year-over-year, from ₹234.04 crore (approximately $28.1 million) in FY24 to ₹1,016.46 crore (roughly $122.1 million) in FY25.
The Reserve Bank of India reported 1 million retail transactions by late June, a milestone that was only achieved after local banks introduced incentives and partially paid employee salaries using the state-issued digital currency. The e-rupee adoption has been sluggish.
To evaluate the system’s scalability, the Reserve Bank had previously encouraged institutions to increase the number of transactions to a minimum of 1 million per day by late 2023.
Nevertheless, the digital currency initiative’s future is uncertain due to the disparity between incentivized metrics and actual user adoption, as the drive has since ceased.