No rush for e-rupee mass rollout, focus is on new use cases: RBI's Sankar

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India is in no rush to open up the pilots for the central bank digital currency (CBDC) to the masses and is, instead, focussing on adding more use cases to the e-rupee with a focus on cross-border transactions, T. Rabi Sankar, deputy governor of the central bank, said on Tuesday.

“Right now, we are focussing on creating sufficient use cases, particularly programmable ones. The area we are focussing on is that a user, who doesn’t need to understand any technology, should be able to attach a program to the CBDC and then use it,” Sankar said on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Fest 2025.

Sankar cited a situation in which someone gives money to their child to buy books. “I should be able to attach that program so that it can only be used to buy books and not used for other things,” he said.

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The central bank is working on several such use cases that are in various stages of development and some which have already been tried out, Sankar said, adding that such functionality will help develop use cases which are unique to the digital currency, thus encouraging adoption.

“Typically, you can do a program based on which merchant you want to use it for, which geography you want to use, or within the time you want to use. These are the standard criteria based on which we will create programs,” he said, adding that this includes integrating payouts for many government schemes and subsidies.

Cross-border as the best use case

Estimating the total number of CBDC users at around 7 million, Sankar said the RBI is in “no hurry” to project a target for the number of users or open up the pilots for mass use. Instead, it will wait for other countries to “simultaneously” launch similar CBDC projects to allow for interoperability.

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“The basic use case for CBDC eventually comes in the cross-border space. So, we have to get into a few cross-border arrangements,” he said, adding that certain countries in Europe are working on their CBDC pilots.

Asked if the mark-up on CBDC-led cross border transactions will be lower than those facilitated by private global players such as Revolut and Wise, Sankar said that while the mechanism will be similar, CBDC payments will be simpler and direct, wherein the need for an intermediate payment provider will be eliminated.

“There are two costs to a cross-border transaction. One is the cost of processing, and the other is the cost of foreign exchange conversion,” Sankar explained, adding that while the foreign exchange conversion will need to be provided through the banking system, the processing charges will be made “more efficient” through the use of CBDCs.

From multiple user UPI to solar energy trade to wearables

At the Global Fintech Fest, the central bank rolled out three new functionalities for the digital currency. The biggest feature was the ability to make payments between CBDC wallets, simply by linking the wallet to a mobile number without the need for a bank account.

The RBI also launched an integrated platform under the National Payments Corp. of India, where users can access CBDC wallets of all the registered banks at one place, and the option for retail users of solar rooftops to trade energy credits via the e-rupee.

The deputy governor also launched the multi-signatory accounts feature on unified payments interface (UPI) to enable multi-signatory/joint accounts on UPI. With this, more than one user can authorize payments on a single UPI account. The functionality is expected to help corporates, small enterprises, startups, trusts, and joint account holders to use UPI for vendor payments, recurring payments and reimbursements, etc.

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Other new features included the facility to make small value transactions using wearable glasses via UPI Lite, marking the first time UPI payments have been extended to the wearable ecosystem.

Yet another launch was of the retail foreign exchange platform with Clearing Corp. of India (CCIL), which will enable real time forex transactions via NPCI Bharat BillPay’s Bharat Connect platform. The platform will facilitate three delivery modes: currency notes, forex card load or outward remittances.