E-rupee in circulation grows to Rs 1k cr; RBI exploring cross-border CBDC pilots

Mumbai: The value of central bank digital currency (CBDC) or e-rupee in circulation jumped to Rs 1,016 crore at the end of March 2025 from Rs 234 crore in the year-ago period, the Reserve Bank said on Thursday.

The RBI is exploring the commencement of CBDC pilots on cross-border payments, it said in the annual report without giving a timeline.

The CBDC was first introduced in November 2022 initially with a wholesale pilot, which was followed up with a retail one as well. Simplifying cross-border payments was one of the stated advantages of the CBDC, which had to be introduced in face of the challenge to the currency system from non-fiat virtual currencies like Bitcoins.

"...the Reserve Bank is exploring commencement of CBDC pilots on cross-border payments both on bilateral and multilateral basis to overcome key challenges related to turnaround time, efficiency and transparency," it said.

Bilateral cross-border CBDC pilots with select countries are being "actively explored", and progress has been made in finalisation of roadmap, technical aspects and use cases, the report said.

The Reserve Bank's participation in multilateral CBDC initiatives, particularly under the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, is also being considered, as per the report.

The central bank also aims to further expand the scope and coverage of ongoing pilots in e-rupee-Retail and e-rupee-Wholesale by introducing new use cases and features and also improve the technological aspects of the account aggregator framework to enhance transparency, customer convenience and efficiency, it said.

A bulk of Rs 857 crore of the e-rupee in circulation is in Rs 500 denomination, the annual report said, adding Rs 200 (Rs 91 crore in circulation) and Rs 100 (Rs 38 crore in circulation) denominations also have sizeable presence.

Starting with the initial use cases of person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M), the Reserve Bank expanded the central bank digital currency (CBDC)-Retail (e-rupee-R) pilot to include offline and programmability features in FY25, the annual report said.

As at end-March 2025, the e-rupee retail pilot was expanded to 17 banks and 60 lakh users.

To further enhance adoption and improve distribution, certain non-banks have been allowed to offer CBDC wallets. Moreover, the scope of e-rupee-Wholesale was further expanded and diversified with the addition of four standalone primary dealers (SPDs), it said.

Programmability use cases include direct benefit transfers to farmers against generation of carbon credits and loans to tenant farmers under kisan credit card (KCC) in select locations, it noted, adding that employee allowances for fuel/meal purposes are also being implemented by banks.

Odisha has made e-rupee payments to 88,000 beneficiaries under the Subhadra Yojana, the annual report said, adding discussions are underway with multiple central government ministries and state governments for leveraging programmability feature of CBDC to transfer funds to beneficiaries with a defined end use.