RBI Starts Digital Currency Pilot With four Banks: Report

India’s RBI, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has reportedly asked four banks to pilot the country’s Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) previous its public launch.

RBI to Pilot India’s CBDC With Public-Sector Banks

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s Central Bank, has reportedly asked four public-sector banks to trial India’s Central Bank digital currency (CBDC), Moneycontrol Monday, citing 2 nameless bank officers.

One of the officers was quoted as saying:

The RBI has asked India, Punjab commercial bank, Union Bank of India, and Bank of Baroda to run the pilot internally.

“There could be a pilot on CBDCs,” another senior public-sector bank official confirmed to the publication. “The tally could accompany the launch this year. once it’ll specifically roll out the merchandise and specifications is to be seen.”

The Reserve Bank of India is additionally reportedly consulting with many fintech corporations on the digital rupee. Among them is the U.S.-based firm FIS, that has been advising central banks on CBDC problems, like offline and programmable payments, money inclusion, and cross-border CBDC payments.

FIS senior director Julia Demidova told the news outlet last week:

FIS has had numerous engagements with the tally … Our connected scheme might be extended to the RBI to experiment with numerous CBDC choices.

“Whether it’s a wholesale or retail CBDC dealing, our technology may also be extended to business banks wherever they will check and tokenize Central Bank cash within the kind of digital regulated cash,” she said.

India’s minister of finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, declared while presenting the federal budget 2022 in Feb that the RBI can issue a CBDC during this year. In May, the Central Bank mentioned that it’ll adopt a “graded approach” to launching the digital rupee.

“The digital rupee is going to be the digital kind of our physical rupee and can be regulated by the tally. This can be such a system that may alter associate degree exchange of physical currency with digital currency,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi antecedently explained.

Meanwhile, the tally is advocating for a ban on all cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. RBI Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar aforementioned earlier this year that cryptocurrencies have “no underlying money flows” and “no intrinsic price,” adding that “they square measure love Ponzi schemes, and will even be worse.” The central banker stressed, “Banning cryptocurrency is maybe the foremost wise selection in India.”