Digital Rupee Has Amassed 50 Lakh Users in Retail Trial, Set for More Programmability: RBI

The trial of the country’s digital rupee or e-Rupee is progressing rapidly. 50 lakh users have joined it. The trial of digital rupee is being done in collaboration with 16 banks. This Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) was launched in December 2022. CBDC is also being trialled in some other countries.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Shaktikanta Das said that about 50 lakh users are involved in the retail trial of e-Rupee. He said that RBI will not be in a hurry to add it to the financial system. Das said that the programmability feature of e-Rupee will be important to integrate it into the financial system. With this, farmers will also be able to get loans easily. Das said, “Farmers who do farming on rented land find it difficult to get loans for the materials used in farming because they do not have ownership rights of the land to deposit in banks. By doing programming, it will be easier for the farmers to take loans related to agriculture. This will not require the banks to establish the identity of the farmer.

Earlier this month a Reuters Report It was reported that UPI apps like Google Pay and PhonePe are also planning to join the digital rupee trial under the supervision of RBI. Digital Rupee (e-Rupee) will also be accepted in Dubai. Recently, Dubai crypto exchange ByBit had announced the integration of e-Rupee for its peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction service. ByBit had said that it had received requests from Indian merchants regarding support for e-Rupi. In P2P payments, the seller deposits the payment in the form of cryptocurrency in the wallet of the exchange. After this the seller decides a sale price for the asset. If the buyer accepts that price then the deal is done on the exchange. After this, payment is sent directly from the buyer to the seller’s bank account. In this way the P2P transaction is completed.

With this digital currency issued by RBI, merchants trading in rupees are confident that the processing of digital transactions will be secure. ByBit’s P2P transactions will allow merchants to accept payments in rupees. This will reduce the risk of their bank accounts being targeted by cyber criminals.