This comes after the banking sector regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, asked lenders to explore setting up a platform to onboard customers and create digital e-rupee awareness. Last month, a discussion was held between the regulator and banks on how to further promote e-rupee, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and one of the suggestions being worked out is to set up a website that will also display promotional material related to the digital rupee, said people aware of the matter.
“As per initial estimates, the website is expected to have around 500,000 hits per month, which may double by the end of the first year of operations,” said a bank executive. The proposed website may be set up through the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), he said.
The RBI, by the end of 2023, has already met its target of hitting a million daily transactions in the retail segment of its CBDC.
“These are still preliminary discussions. The contours of a website or a single platform for all lenders are still being worked out,” the executive said.
An email sent to the RBI did not elicit any response till press time Friday. In October, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said that the CBDC was going to be the future currency of the world, and every central bank and every country needed to work on a CBDC.
“We are even more convinced that CBDC can prove to be the most effective and efficient mode for cross-border payments in particular, other than of course domestic transactions. And this is not something which is very difficult,” he had said. The central bank rolled out a pilot in the retail version of the e-rupee (e-R) on December 1, 2022.
The e-R is in the form of a digital token that represents legal tender. It is being issued in the same denominations as the paper currency and coins. Last year, RBI deputy governor T Rabi Sankar said the central bank would take advantage of the UPI network to increase transactions in CBDC. He said there must be interoperability of the QR codes.