eRupee Recorded Rs 57000000 Transactions in Four Months Retail Trials RBI Report

eRupee, the Indian central bank digital currency (CBDC), crossed Rs 5.70 crore worth of transactions in the first 4 months after entering the retail trial phase. The information was revealed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in response to an RTI query from Moneycontrol. RBI started eRupee retail trials at select locations across the country on December 1, 2022.

RBI reportedly responding to an RTI query from Moneycontrol Said That “As per the data published in the balance sheet of the Reserve Bank of India, as of March 31, 2023, e-rupees worth Rs 5.70 crore were issued for CBDC (retail).” CBDC is an electronic blockchain-based form of a currency. The use of CBDC instead of cash will reduce dependence on paper notes and the data of all transactions will also be clean.

A total of 13 banks, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Canara Bank, are helping RBI in conducting these trials. These banks have also offered benefits and rewards for people transacting with eRupee, helping RBI to meet its target of 10 lakh daily transactions by the end of 2023. RBI is planning to provide more features on eRupee in the coming months. Now many Indian banks are giving customers the opportunity to transact through it. Last week, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das told the media that eRupee will support CBDC for offline payments for rural areas and programmability feature for corporate use.

Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX and co-founder of recently launched crypto futures exchange Pi42, expressed excitement over RBI’s CBDC plan in his post on X on Friday. “This is a great step towards CBDC adoption and growth as it becomes available to all users,” Shetty said. “If there is a way to connect this CBDC to a decentralized blockchain, we can see INR being integrated into DeFi. This will help the Indian rupee strengthen which will be good for India.”

India has launched another groundbreaking innovation in Banking with the introduction of OFFLINE payments via eRupee, following the tremendous success of #UPI,

Soon, transfer money wallet-to-wallet without an internet connection or intermediaries.#CBDC #eRupee #RBI pic.twitter.com/DDDDFVkC7y

— Darshan Raut (@darshaksinh) February 9, 2024

A survey conducted by the CFA Institute (Chartered Financial Analyst) in July last year said that CBDCs were more popular in the Asia-Pacific region. The report said that “Financial stability and inclusion are two of the major reasons driving interest in CBDCs across Asia-Pacific. Apart from this, the rapid growth and sudden decline of private cryptocurrencies have increased interest in CBDCs.”