The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) started the first pilot for a retail e-rupee on December 1, 2022, and a 45-year-old migrant fruit seller is a part of this project.
Around 25 years ago, Bachhe Lal Sahani came to Mumbai from Bihar’s Vaishali district and now sells fruit near the Reserve Bank of India’s headquarters on Mint Road. The RBI officials approached him last month to start accepting e-rupee transactions. Before getting him on board, the RBI officials helped him open a bank account along with a digital wallet.
“It’s been close to a month since I started accepting e-rupee. So far, two or three transactions worth Rs 300 have been made,” Sahani told The Indian Express.
The e-rupee is RBI's version of the central bank digital currency (CBDC). The pilot covers selected locations in a closed user group comprising participating customers and merchants of about 1,500 across the country.
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The RBI has been running a pilot of the wholesale e-rupee since November 1, with nine banks transacting in government securities using the e-rupee. Users will be able to transact with the e-rupee through a digital wallet offered by participating banks and stored on mobile phones or devices.
Sahani told the publication that the volume of e-rupee transactions is lower in the test phase. If Sahani’s customers face issues like delays in payments then they switch to UPI payment as it is faster.
“There was a customer who paid me Rs 50 for fruit using e-rupee but after some days, the same customer was unable to make the CBDC transaction… But once vendors from whom I buy fruit start accepting e-rupee, I will also be able to pay them through CBDC. I have been told that I will be able to withdraw the money from the account once the ATM card comes, which they said will take three months,” he told the publication.
RBI will later test other features and applications of the e-rupee, based on the learnings from this pilot.
The pilot was launched in two phases, with State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and IDC First Bank participating in the first phase across four cities in the country.
Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank will also join the pilot at a later stage across more cities.