Indian banks disbursed some employee benefits through the digital rupee in December, helping the Reserve Bank of India meet its target of one million daily transactions by end-2023, three sources directly familiar with the development said.
The central bank digital currency (CBDC), called the e-rupee, has been devised as a digital alternative to physical cash and has been built using distributed-ledger technology.
The RBI started its e-rupee pilot in December 2022 but transactions averaged only 25,000 a day by the end of October, even though its use case was significantly broadened by linking it to the popular United Payments Interface (UPI), a framework that facilitates peer-to-peer money transfer via mobile apps.
SBI Introduces UPI Interoperability With CBDC for Seamless Transactions
