Use of India's CBDC declines, but central bank presses ahead

India's Reserve Bank deputy governor has revealed that transaction volumes using the nation's central bank digital currency (CBDC) have trended downwards since December 2023 – and may even have been inflated by one-off uses of the currency. In that month – around one year into the pilot – the number of digital rupee …

[Steve Button]

"India's Universal Payments Interface is rapidly becoming one of the world's more prominent payments schemes, with the government promoting its use as a means of luring tourists and speeding cross-border payments. If India's CBDC takes off at home, it too could become a model for other banks around the world"

So, that's the benefit is it? Luring tourists (I'm not quite sure how?) and speedier cross-border payments.

No potential downsides then? No vague indications that it might become programmable? Oh, there is you say. Well, no thanks.

[Roopee]

Successful?

I'm not sure if I want this "experiment" to succeed or not, but it doesn't look to be going well if, with all the new use cases and participants, the number of transactions is actually going down.

[raghumdesai]

CBDC will be successful with two way interoperability with UPI

Currently, interoperability of CBDC with UPI exists, but in only one direction. CBDC users can pay to UPI QR, but a UPI user can not pay directly to CBDC QR code. CBDC makes sense for a merchant only if he can accept payment in his CBDC wallet from any UPI app of paying customers.

[DS999]

22 million transactions

In 3+ months in a country of well over a billion?

Sounds like an epic fail to me - that's equivalent to something like one out of every 70K citizens making one transaction so far.

[MrGreen]

Centralised Control

Sounds like the people know that CBDC’s are designed for centralised control and don’t want to give up their freedom.

The trouble is, governments will give out free money to get people to download the app. People will lap it up.

The app will also create a Digital ID database by stealth.