Citing the Annual Report 2024- 2025, CNBC reported that the Reserve Bank of India plans to expand the scope of its CBDC pilot for both the retail and wholesale segments.
It is worth noting that the topmost bank in India will be introducing new use cases and features for the digital rupee.
Over the past few years, the RBI has shown its pro stance to modernize the financial ecosystem in India, and per CNBC, it is now eyeing an enhancement to the account aggregator framework.
Following this development, the Indian financial infrastructure structure will get increased transparency and strengthened customer service.
Also, India is eyeing CBDC pilots for cross-border payment on both bilateral and multilateral levels. The move demonstrates its support for the usage of digital rupees for international settlement.
India’s CBDC pilot a successful test!
According to available data, the retail CBDC pilot has grown significantly, with over 6 million users and 17 banks participating, as of May 25, 2025. This testing is done at a broader scale in different states, catering to millions of users.
The approach of the Indian Central Bank, which is the RBI, has been largely praised for its digital Indian rupees, and companies like Polygon Labs have also praised its efforts.
MobiKwik, along with CRED, became one of the first companies to offer Reserve Bank central currency through digital wallets. In cooperation with the RBI and Yes Bank, MobiKwik launched a fully scaled production version of its e-Rupee wallet on January 27, 2025.
With a daily transaction limit of ₹50,000 and a per-transaction restriction of ₹10,000, participants can use UPI to send and receive money to other e-wallets or traditional bank accounts. 50 paise to 500 rupees are among the supported denominations.
Also, CRED launched the feature with RBI and YES Bank, yet it is planning for future updates like programmable merchant payment, CRED Pay integration, and pinless transactions below 500 Indian rupees.
The major participating banks in the pilot program are ICICI, SBI Bank, YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra, HDFC, Union Bank of India, IDFC, and Bank of Baroda, yet there are speculations of UPI application joining the program as they dominate the UPI transaction market.
Even while the program has some promising use cases, issues like privacy concerns and UPI competition still exist. One factor that could hinder the wider adoption of CBDC in India is the constant growing adoption of cryptocurrencies.
In 2023 and 2024, India became the nation that topped the crypto adoption for two consecutive years, and by the year 2035, the crypto market in India is expected to grow to $15 billion.
