HDFC Bank onboards 1 lakh customers and 1.7 lakh merchants on CBDC platform
HDFC Bank on Thursday said it has onboarded over 1 lakh customers and 1.7 lakh merchants under the Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot programme. The bank also announced the launch of UPI QR code interoperable with India's sovereign digital currency. With this, HDFC Bank has become one of the first banks in the country to complete the integration process.
The interoperable UPI QR code allows HDFC Bank merchants who have been onboarded on the bank’s CBDC platform, to accept payments from their customers in the form of Digital Rupee currency, boosting usage of CBDC in day-to-day transactions. The initiative is an extension to the CBDC pilot launched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), last year. CBDC or Digital Rupee is a tokenised digital version of the Indian Rupee, issued by the RBI as a Central Bank Digital Currency.
An interoperable QR code enables basic QR payment acceptance terminal to support Scan & Pay feature from various factors & payment options. It provides freedom to accept payments using the same QR from various form factors. “CBDC is a forward-looking initiative and its QR interoperability with the already accepted and widely popular UPI is going to prove greatly beneficial to its usage,” said Parag Rao, Country Head – Payments, Consumer Finance, Technology & Digital Banking, HDFC Bank.HDFC Bank customers can transact in digital currency using the ‘Digital Rupee’ application.
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