Country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) recorded over nine lakh transactions in the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since December 1, 2022, according to the bank’s Chief Technology Officer, Balaji Rajagopalan on November 23.
Also, SBI onboarded around 40,000 merchants in the CBDC pilot during this period, said Rajagopalan.
“We have around 40,000 merchants who have been onboarded and we have 9 lakh plus transactions from December 1, 2022,” Rajagopalan said on the sidelines of a banking summit organised by the industry body FICCI and the Indian Banks Association.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) started pilot testing of CBDC in November last year in the wholesale segment and later in December it was extended to retail segment.
Since then, the number of transactions in the retail space has seen picking up, with RBI Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar saying around 15,000 transactions are taking place in a day in the retail segment. Rajagopalan said SBI has 4 lakh users in the CBDC.
On the other hand, in the wholesale pilot, the volumes and number of trades have not seen a major pick up, as per data.
According to data compiled by Moneycontrol, the settlement of trades in government securities (G-Secs) using digital rupee was in the range of Rs 500-600 crore a day in the first month of launch, which in the later months fell to just Rs 10-60 crore a day.
Similarly, the number of trades has fallen from 45 to 60 a day in the first month to just two to six a day in the later months.
On October 12, Moneycontrol reported that the central bank had started a wholesale pilot of CBDC in the call money market.
Later, on October 19, RBI Executive Director Ajay Kumar Choudhary confirmed this development.
“It (the wholesale pilot of CBDC) has started, but volumes are not pretty good, as it is a test of the system, accounting, and multiple things. The pilot is to test all those things,” Choudhary said on the sidelines of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India's 18th Annual Summit & Awards, Banking & Financial Sector Lending Companies on October 19.
The call money market is where banks borrow from or lend to each other for the short term, usually a day, at market-determined rates.
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