India’s central bank mulls new features for digital rupee, cross-border use cases: report

The Reserve Bank of India wants to roll out new functionalities for the digital rupee and test its use in cross-border payments with international partners.

India‘s central bank said it will introduce new features and use cases for the digital rupee’s cross-border use, signaling a possible shift toward its international adoption.

The update came in the Reserve Bank of India’s Annual Report for 2024-25, where it said the next phase of development would build on lessons from existing pilots, CNBC TV18 reports. The RBI launched its wholesale digital rupee pilot in November 2022, followed by the retail pilot in December 2022.

While the specifics of the new use cases have not been disclosed, the report states that the RBI is exploring CBDC pilots for cross-border payments on “both bilateral and multilateral bases.” According to the report, the value of the digital rupee in circulation rose 334% year-on-year, from ₹234.04 crore (about $28.1 million) in FY24 to ₹1,016.46 crore (about $122.1 million) in FY25.

The e-rupee adoption has been sluggish, with the Reserve Bank of India reporting 1 million retail transactions by late June, a milestone reached only after local banks introduced incentives and partially paid employee salaries using the state-issued digital currency.

The RBI had previously urged banks to increase transactions to at least 1 million per day by late 2023 to test the system’s scalability. However, that push has since ceased, casting doubt on the future of the digital currency initiative due to the gap between incentivized metrics and actual user adoption.