Central Bank of India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch its first retail digital rupee pilot on December 1st with eight banks participating. The pilot will start in his four cities and then expand to cover his nine cities across India.
RBI selects 8 banks, 13 cities to test retail digital currency
The announcement follows the RBI’s Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot, which launched on November 1.
Eight banks have joined the retail digital currency pilot in two phases. State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and IDFC First Bank in four Indian cities will participate in Phase 1. Baroda Bank, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank will participate in Phase 1. Participating in two phases:
Central Bank of India details:
The pilot will initially cover four cities: Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Bhubaneswar, and later Ahmedabad. , Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna, Shimla.
“[the] scope of the pilot will include more banks, users and locations as needed.
On the RBI’s retail digital rupee
the Central Bank of India explained:
e₹-R will be in the form of a digital token representing legal tender..
The digital rupee is currently issued The central bank noted that it would be issued in the same denominations as are distributed through intermediaries such as banks.
You will be able to transact with e₹-R through digital wallets stored in ,” the central bank elaborated, noting that transactions could be conducted person-to-person (P2P) or person-to-merchant (P2M). Merchant displays a QR code that can be used for payment
“e₹-R provides physical cash features such as trust, security and finality of payments. As with cash, it does not accrue interest and can be converted into other forms of currency, such as deposits in banks,” the central bank continued, detailing:
The pilot will demonstrate the robustness of the entire process of digital rupee creation, distribution and retail consumption in real time. Various features and applications of the e₹-R token and architecture will be tested in future pilots based on learnings from this pilot.
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