According to the Atlantic Council, 134 countries are currently exploring CBDCs in different phases — including every G20 country.
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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is seeking to expand its cross-border payments platform — which will allow instant settlements — by adding new trading partners in Asia and the Middle East.
According to Bloomberg, India already has agreements with neighboring Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal, with plans to add the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the settlements program. India is also exploring using central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as its primary settlement mechanism.
India’s CBDC is currently a bank-to-bank solution — not a widely adopted consumer-facing central bank digital currency. The bank may expand the CBDC to include most retail consumers, though it has not provided a timeframe for this.
Different phases of CBDC development around the world. Source: Atlantic Council
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India continues to be one of the biggest proponents of CBDCs globally, along with fellow BRICS members China and Russia. India started exploring the possibility of CBDC settlement in 2020, and in 2022, the RBI began testing CBDC development through pilot programs.
In February, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that the bank was working on offline solutions for the digital rupee to encourage its use in the many rural parts of India without robust online connectivity.
India said in August that it had amassed about 5 million users for its digital rupee pilot program. Speaking at the Global Conference on Digital Public Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies, Das said there was no rush to turn the digital rupee pilot program into a standardized, system-wide CBDC for the Indian population.
During the conference, Das also revealed plans to make sovereign CBDC schemes more interoperable by adopting a “plug-and-play” program that would allow seamless and efficient transactions between different systems.
The push to develop CBDCs has come under criticism from privacy advocates, human rights activists and liberty-minded individuals. Critics say the dangers of centrally controlled digital ledgers and the potential for abuse by governments far outweigh any cost or efficiency benefits.
Magazine: India mulls new crypto ban to support CBDC, Lazarus Group strikes again: Asia Express
