E-Rupee pilot in call money market by October: RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to launch a pilot programme for central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions for interbank borrowing or call money market operations by October, according to the regulator’s executive director Ajay Kumar Choudhary on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders’ Summit here on Sunday.

The digital rupee-wholesale (e-W) trial of the wholesale CBDC was launched in November 2022, with the use case confined to the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities.

The RBI chose nine banks for its wholesale CBDC pilot project and has already launched a retail CBDC (e-R) experiment on December 1, 2022. The e-R is a digital token that functions as legal tender.

It is distributed through financial intermediaries such as banks and is issued in the same denominations as paper currency and coins. Users can transact with e-R using a digital wallet provided by one of the partner banks.

During the G20 Summit, the central bank displayed different digital projects in the financial sector at the exposition pavilion. Public Tech Platform (PTP) for Frictionless Credit, CBDC, UPI One World, RuPay On-The-Go, and Bharat Bill Payment System are among them.