CBDC transaction volumes down, P2M transactions growing: RBI

Mumbai, Apr 5 (PTI) The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) transaction volumes have gone down after crossing 10 lakh in late-December 2023, Reserve Bank of India Governor T Rabi Sankar said on Friday.

The overall number of transactions has touched 2.2 crore since the launch of the CBDC pilot on December 1, 2022, Sankar said, adding that the number of participants in the pilot stands at 50 lakh.

“Volumes have not been the same, they have come down,” Sankar said, adding that the target of 10 lakh a day was met earlier on the back of measures such as interoperability with a very popular UPI platform.

As per a news report, banks disbursed employee benefits using the digital rupee in December, which helped the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) meet its target of 10 lakh daily transactions. Sankar said there are 46 lakh users and 4 lakh merchants transacting in CBDC right now, and added that as the acceptance of CBDC grows, there has been a growth in the P2M, or peer-to-merchant, transactions.

“Volumes are shifting from P2P (peer to peer) to P2M as more merchants are available,” Sankar said.

Sankar also said the programmability feature on the CBDC kickstarted on Friday, with a use case, where a farmer was transferred money designed specifically for buying agricultural inputs. A closed-user group within the bank is testing newly developed offline CBDC use cases, Sankar said, adding that the same will be launched for the public later.

It can be noted that earlier in the day, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das had proposed to make CBDC-retail accessible to a broader segment of users by enabling non-bank payment system operators to offer CBDC wallets.

The move will facilitate testing of the resiliency of CBDC platform to handle multi-channel transactions, Governor Shaktikanta Das had said.