E-rupee push: RBI Looks to tokenise government securities, customer deposits

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is evaluating tokenising assets such as government bonds and customer deposits to expand the usage of its digital currency, two bankers aware of the developments told ET.

Investors would be able to purchase government securities and other bonds using digital currency in their wallets.

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This would have the twin benefit of widening digital currency usage beyond the simple merchant payments at present and also help boost retail participation in the government bond market.

Tokenisation of assets refers to the process of creating a digital representation of an asset, called a token, on a blockchain network. “Discussions have happened between banks and the RBI around tokenisation of assets,” said a senior banker aware of the developments.

“However, these are still in exploratory stages and will take time to become a reality,” the banker said, declining to be named.


Emailed queries to the RBI on the subject remained unanswered till the time of going to press.

Another banker said this would help create an ecosystem around CBDC (central bank digital currency). Currently, the adoption of the RBI-backed digital currency is limited given they can only be used to make payments.

“In case of retail payments, consumers are already using the Unified Payments Interface. Hence, convincing them to park a certain part of their savings account holdings into a separate digital wallet has not been received with enthusiasm,” said the second banker.

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