New Delhi: According to Central Bank Executive Director Ajay Kumar Choudhary, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to start a pilot programme for Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in October for use in transactions for call money market or interbank borrowing.
In November of last year, a pilot programme for the wholesale CBDC, also known as the Digital Rupee-Wholesale (e-W), was started. The use case at the time was restricted to the settlement of secondary market transactions involving government securities. On December 1, the retail CBDC pilot programme commenced.
Speaking at the RBI’s Innovation Pavillion, which is located at the site of the G20 Leaders’ Summit, Choudhary stated, “We are going to start the pilot on wholesale CBDC use in interbank borrowing this month or early next month.”
CBDC would be included in the Union Budget for 2022–2023, according to Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of finance for the union. As a result of the Finance Bill 2022’s passing, the pertinent portions of the RBI Act 1934 underwent the required modifications.
According to PTI, the RBI chose nine banks for its pilot project for wholesale CBDC: State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank, YES Bank, IDFC First Bank , Kotak Mahindra Bank and HSBC.
At the G20 Leaders’ Summit, RBI presented a number of digital initiatives it has launched in the banking industry. Public Tech Platform (PTP) for Frictionless Credit, CBDC, UPI One World, RuPay On-The-Go, and Bharat Bill Payment System are a few of them.
According to the central bank’s annual report for 2022–2023, the retail e-Rupee was introduced in denominations of 50 paise, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500, whereas the wholesale e-Rupee has no set denomination.
At the recently completed G20 Leaders’ Summit, RBI highlighted a number of digital initiatives it has implemented in the banking industry. These include the CBDC, Rupay, UPI One World On-The-Go, and Public Tech Platform (PTP) for Frictionless Credit.