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Informist, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026

 

--RBI Malhotra: CBDC not a substitute for cash, fast payment systems 

 

NEW DELHI – The Central Bank Digital Currency is not a substitute for cash or other fast payment systems and the Reserve Bank of India will introduce it only after evaluating the range of features it offers. "The CBDC is not, for the moment, a substitute for cash, neither is it a substitute for other fast payment systems. It is there to augment the payment systems that we have," central bank Governor Sanjay Malhotra said Monday.

 

"Unless and until we have the whole bouquet of features which are available on this CBDC, it will be premature to implement it on large scale. However, at the same time, there are additional advanced features which other forms of payment and currency do not have," he said at a press conference after the RBI board meeting.

 

In the pilot stage, bank customers hold the retail CBDC, or e-rupee, in separate digital wallets. These wallets can be loaded with money from the bank account linked to the wallet. Launched by the RBI in 2022 to counter the growing popularity of crypto assets such as Bitcoin, the retail CBDC has been positioned by the central bank not as an alternative to the domestic instant-payments system Unified Payment Interface but as a digital version of currency notes.  End

 

Reported by Aaryan Khanna and Sagar Sen

Edited by Ashish Shirke

 

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