T Rabi Sankar reiterated the need for CBDCs to promote cross-border trade and improve efficiencies. The number of banks adopting CBDCs is expected to double to 25 soon
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)—which is running pilots for the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) through 13 banks and around 3 lakh merchants nationwide—hopes transactions through this system touch one million per day by end-2023, Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar told a bankers’ gathering on Tuesday.
Currently, CBDC transactions are estimated to be between 5,000 to 10,000 per day, he added.
“I am targeting one million transactions because it is high enough to understand and study the pattern and not too high that it cannot be achieved,” he told bankers at a meeting of the Indian Banks’ Association. Currently, the vastly popular and well accepted Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform sees near 300 million transactions per day.