Indian CBDC Will Support Offline & International Transactions, Says RBI Director

The RBI executive director revealed several upcoming plans with the Indian CBDC payment system so that citizens can use CBDC as an international & universal payment tool.

To this date, more than 200 central banks are working on the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs). Only a limited number of countries are in the actual race of CBDC development. China was the first in the world which launched CBDC in late 2021. Indian Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), launched the CBDC pilot program on 1 Nov 2022 and so far around $134 million and 800,000 transactions have been completed via wholesale CBDCs.

Recently Ajay Kumar Choudhary, executive director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), spoke with CNBC TV18 and shared several ongoing plans regarding Indian CBDC. 

Mr. Ajay said that RBI is looking for better interaction with the fintech companies so that the CBDC focussed payment system can achieve the best level of user experience.

RBI’s executive director also confirmed that the central bank is looking to explore ways to bring offline transactions with CBDC and also to integrate with the legacy systems in other countries so that citizens can use CBDC in cross-border payments also. 

“We are eagerly looking forward to the private sector and fintechs’ participation in CBDC. We will see their contribution, especially on offline and cross-border CBDC transactions,” Ajay said.

Further on behalf of the RBI plans, Ajay confirmed that they are doing their best to make CBDC more similar to physical cash, where citizens will have full anonymity with their financial transactions.

Earlier this, India’s national payment network, the unified payments interface (UPI) announced that Singapore also adopted the Indian payment system UPI.