RBI seeks ways to make digital currency payments easy as cash

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Reserve Bank of India and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), for pushing the adoption of the central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC), said two bankers in the know of the matter.

Both the RBI and NPCI want CBDC to make digital payments as simple as cash transactions, the bankers said.

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The RBI has also opened a sandbox for startups to test multiple CBDC use cases. As of now, daily transactions linger in the range of tens of thousands against the target of 1-million-plus that was expected by end-December.

“The problem is CBDC is not solving something that is not already being done by Unified Payments Interface (UPI), that is why it is hard to get customer adoption,” said the founder of a major payment fintech startup.

Industry insiders believe once new use cases get opened up on CBDC, it will attract more users to these wallets.

A unique aspect around the digital currency is it can be programmed for specific purposes. That opens up massive opportunities in direct benefit transfer, cash disbursals for specific purposes or something as simple as giving pocket money to children only to be used for canteen food or something specific.

“Currently, banks don’t have the required infrastructure to build products on top of CBDCs. Once the banks build these capabilities, many use cases will emerge. Programmability of money is what I believe will drive the adoption of retail CBDC and purpose-bound money is a big use case,” said Neeraj Singh,