India’s CBDC Pilot Test Garners 50k Users and 5k Merchants

• RBI deputy governor Rabi Sankar announced the first public milestones.
• As of December 1, 2022, 770,000 transactions have been processed.

Although it has only been a few months since India joined the CBDC race. The government has no plans to accelerate its central bank digital currency (CBDC) trial. On February 8th, as per reports, the country’s new CBDC trial has already attracted 50,000 customers. And 5,000 merchants since the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) introduced the digital rupee trial last year.

At a policy news conference, RBI deputy governor Rabi Sankar announced the first public milestones of India’s digital currency, the CBDC. And emphasized that the government aims to continue with CBDC testing in the easiest manner possible.

Sankar stated:

“We have our targets in terms of users, in terms of merchants. We will go slowly.”

No More Participants Allowed

Together, the current notification and information from an official digital rupee application indicate that enrollment in the trial programme is now closed. Data from the ICICI Bank’s digital rupee app indicates that the CBDC programme in India is at max at the time of writing. But that more participants may be added to the pilot at a later date.

While discussing the progress of the digital rupee pilot project. Sankar said that as of December 1, 2022, 770,000 transactions have been processed by eight different banks. Currently, implementation is underway in five cities, with a possibility for nine more locations to join the trial later on. The representative said that five additional banks would soon be participating in the initiative.

With the goal of causing as little disturbance as possible to the existing financial system, the RBI suggested implementing it in three stages.