MUMBAI, July 11 (Reuters) – A senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) official said on Tuesday that the Reserve Bank of India is targeting 1 million transactions per day through its central bank digital currency (CBDC) by the end of this year. Stated.
RBI has devised the electronic rupee as a digital alternative to physical cash using blockchain distributed ledger technology.
RBI Deputy Governor T. Ravi Sankar said in a speech that there will be 1.3 million customers and 300,000 merchants using CBDC as of June 2023.
Central banks want to introduce CBDCs as digital money, not just as a means of payment, and a different strategy is needed to get customers to use CBDCs, Sankar added.
“We need to ensure how the anonymity of transactions under CBDC is maintained,” he said, adding that the biggest advantage of CBDC comes from cross-border transactions.
Last year, RBI began experimenting with wholesale and retail versions of the electronic rupee using blockchain distributed ledger technology as an alternative to cash.
Bankers are skeptical of the project, seeing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a strong contender in the retail use of electronic payments, as they see no CBDC benefits similar to Internet-based banking in its current form. had expressed concern. rupee.
UPI allows users to transfer money between banks without disclosing account details.
But Sankar said the central bank would not consider giving incentives to CBDCs, adding that digital currencies do not compete with the UPI.
Reported by Siddhi Nayak in Mumbai and written by Seturaman NR in Bangalore.Editing: Sohini Goswami
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