India's CBDC pilot project for retail takes up 50,000 users, RBI continues the Go Slow approach

India's CBDC pilot project for retail takes up 50,000 users, RBI continues the Go Slow approach

India's CBDC pilot project for retail, which started on December 1, has taken 50,000 users and 5,000 dealers on board. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was shared in the two months.

Currently, digital rupie (e-rupie) transactions are available in a closed group of banks, cities and dealers.

India's CBDC plan is slowly progressing

"We want the process to run, but we want the process to be gradually and slowly. We don't have in a hurry not to make anything so quickly," said T Rabi Sankar, deputy governor of the RBI, at a press conference according to politics at the beginning of this week.

he added that the RBI has its goals in relation to users and dealers, and it will go slowly.

The Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman officially announced in February 2022 during her budget speech that the country would introduce its CBDC in the coming financial year 2022-2023. Later, both the Indian Ministry of Finance and the RBI announced that e-rupie would be introduced in the same calendar year. Finally, on November 1st, the RBI introduced the e-rupie for the wholesale segment and on December 1st for the retail segment.

The RBI's approach to cryptocurrencies was excessively repellent, and their plans for the introduction of CBDC are extremely careful. After 50,000 users, the bank has initially discontinued the onboarding of new users. In the next phase, five other banks and nine other cities would be involved in the current e-Rupien pilot project.

"The RBI does not want to get into a situation in which it does something without actually understanding the likely effects or would always like to be in a position in which it can cope with the consequences," reported The Economic Times when Sankar illustrated the attitude of the RBI.

CBDC in wholesale cannot impress bankers

Compared to the lukewarm enthusiasm for CBDC in retail, the large customer pilot project was unable to impress the bankers after a month of his test phase, cryptopotato December. The use of e-rupies for the wholesale segment during the current test state is limited to the purchase of government bonds on the secondary market.

It is intended to facilitate interbanking on the securities market by taking on the role of the settlement guarantee and clearing point. E-rupie is delivered with a built-in guarantee of the central bank. However, bankers find it difficult to provide e-rupia bills for every trade instead of sending stacks of billing by leaving a group of shops in the existing clearing house system.

On another note, Alfred Kelly, CEO of the digital payment company Visa, noticed during a conference at the annual general meeting last month that both stable coins and CBDC can play an important role in global payments.

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