Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday encouraged the use of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) digital currency—the central bank digital currency (CBDC)—while speaking at the launch of the Odisha government’s women-centric scheme, Subhadra Yojana.
Speaking at the event, Modi said the scheme will provide more than 1 crore women across the state with financial assistance of Rs 50,000, which will be given to women in a timely manner and deposited directly to their bank accounts.
Modi also added that the RBI’s digital currency pilot project has been attached to the Yojana whereby the women can spend digitally, and he congratulated women on being part of the digital currency initiative.
In 2022, RBI launched the CBDC pilot program for both retail (CBDC-R) and the wholesale segment (CBDC-W).
CBDC-W serves institutional participants of the financial markets. CBDC-R is a digital medium of exchange for retail consumers with initial use cases being Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant (P2M) transactions. On the direct benefit transfers (DBT) front, the central government conducted over 10 billion transactions amounting to Rs 6.9 trillion during 2023-24.
According to the RBI’s currency and finance report, the retail pilot CBDC saw customers growing to 5 million by June 2024 from 1.3 million a year ago, while merchants increased to 0.42 million from 0.3 million.
During April’s monetary policy, the central bank said that CBDC pilots are currently operating with increasing use cases and participating banks. It is making CBDC-R accessible to a broader population by allowing non-bank payment system operators to offer CBDC wallets, which will enhance access and expand choices for customers.
First Published: Sep 17, 2024 | 8:52 PM IST
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