India to Test Retail Version of Digital Rupee

India’s central bank will begin testing its proposed digital rupee for retail use this week.

“The pilot will test the robustness of the entire process of digital rupee creation, distribution, and retail usage in real-time,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a news release Tuesday (Nov. 29).

The test will launch on Dec. 1, one month after the bank began the wholesale version of the test. It will encompass eight banks in India in 13 cities, although the project scope could extend to other cities, banks, and users if necessary.

As PYMNTS has reported, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said its approach to the issuance of a digital rupee is guided “by two basic considerations — to create a digital rupee that is as close as possible to a paper currency and to manage the process of introducing digital rupee in a seamless manner.”

India’s new CBDC efforts follow reports last week that the Bank of Japan would begin experimenting with a digital currency next year with the help of three of the nation’s banks.

The bank will carry out the tests in spring 2023, working with private lenders and other organizations to determine if there are any issues connected to bank deposits and withdrawals.

The test will also determine if a digital yen will withstand natural disasters and function in places without internet access. These experiments will last about two years, with the bank deciding on whether to issue a digital yen in 2026.

Also this month, the banks of France, Singapore, and Switzerland began Project Mariana, a partnership trialing their experimental CBDCs and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

This six-month experiment — said to be the first of its kind and involving hypothetical CBDCs from all three countries — will test cross-border CBDC trading and settlement.