India’s recently launched in-house central bank digital currency and is now being tested for offline functionality.
The RBI launched the wholesale segment pilot for the digital rupee on Nov. 1, 2022, onboarding 50,000 users and 5,000 merchants for real-world testing. As of Feb. 25, around $134 million and 800,000 transactions have been completed via wholesale CBDCs.
Building on this progress, Ajay Kumar Choudhary, the executive director of the Reserve Bank of India said the RBI is looking at the CBDC’s offline functionality. He stated the RBI is gauging the CBDC’s potential for cross-border transactions and linkage with legacy systems in other countries.
Moreover, speaking on behalf of the RBI, Choudhary said the CBDC would soon become the medium of exchange and needs all features of physical currency, including anonymity. India’s motivation for launching the CBDC was to improve regional financial inclusion and spearhead the digital economy. Choudhary also told CNBC TV18 that CBDC would eventually act as a replacement for cryptocurrencies
