RBI To Launch First Pilot Of Digital Rupee As per reports the pilot for retail digital currency is likely to be launched this month
By Teena Jose
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The Reserve Bank of India's sovereign digital currency is going to be launching its first pilot digital rupee in the wholesale segment on Tuesday. As per reports the pilot for retail digital currency is likely to be launched this month.
"The use case for this pilot is expected to make inter-bank market more efficient. Settlement in central bank money would reduce transaction costs by pre-empting the need for settlement guarantee infrastructure or for collateral to mitigate settlement risk. Based on the learning from the first phase of the pilot, the future pilots would focus on other wholesale transactions and cross-border payments," said RBI in a statement.
Nine banks which includes, SBI, BoB, Union Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, IDFC First Bank and HSBC, have been identified to participate in the first pilot phase.
Anita Mishra, head of securities services HSBC India, in a news report was quoted as saying, "While there have been few CBDC test cases around the world in a user acceptance testing (UAT) environment. India's step towards wholesale CBDC test is among the very first pilot projects."
On October 7, the RBI released a concept note to create more awareness about the digital rupee. According to the concept note, the wholesale e-rupee will work on an account-based model, which would require keeping record of balances and transactions of all holders of digital currency and indicate the ownership of the monetary balances.
