Google, Amazon, Walmart to join RBI’s eRupee CBDC pilot
GooglePay, Walmart-backed PhonePe and AmazonPay are among five payments companies looking to participate in India’s central bank’s digital currency pilot by offering transactions via the eRupee, three sources directly involved in the talks said.
The other two Indian fintech companies Cred and Mobikwik have signed up to participate in the eRupee pilot project, the sources said.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched a pilot for the eRupee, a digital alternative to physical currency, in December 2022. After an initial uptick, eRupee transactions have declined, reflecting the struggle central banks worldwide have had in popularizing digital currencies.
Google Pay and Amazon Pay are payment applications offered by Google and Alphabet Inc.’s Amazon.com, respectively, that enable retail payments through the widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India.
Initially, the central bank only allowed banks to offer eRupee through their mobile applications, but in April, the bank said payment companies would also be allowed to offer e-Rupee transactions through their platform once approved by the RBI.
Payments companies are working closely with the RBI and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the domestic payments authority, and are expected to roll out access to eRupee in the next three to four months, the sources said.
The sources did not want to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
The RBI and NPCI did not respond to emails seeking comment, while the five companies themselves declined to comment.
While the number of transactions involving the digital currency had risen to over a million per day at the end of last year, the number has since fallen sharply to around 100,000-200,000 per day, one of the sources said.
According to the second source, allowing eRupee to popular payment companies could increase volumes by expanding the user base.
Together, these five payment companies account for over 85 percent of digital payments via UPI, averaging around 13 billion transactions per month.
While the central bank continues to try to popularize the eRupee, it has no plans to launch the digital currency on a large scale at this time, the second source said.
“The e-rupee is likely to remain in the pilot phase for the next few years,” the source said.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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