Key Highlights
- India wants the RBI to expand its wholesale and retail digital rupee pilots.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called for progress on both wholesale and retail CBDC pilots.
- India is tightening rules for crypto platforms, with 15 firms facing FIU non-compliance notices.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to advance its wholesale and retail digital rupee pilots, speaking in a keynote address at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.
According to reports including Bloomberg and remarks carried by PTI, she said the RBI should build on work already started and sharpen its digital rupee capabilities.
“I urge the Reserve Bank of India to further advance and also develop what it has initiated through both the wholesale and retail CBDC pilots,” Sitharaman said. She said that, sensing the momentum in such payment systems and across global markets, the central bank needs to “continue to sharpen its capabilities with the digital rupee.”
India pushes for more use of digital rupee
The RBI has been testing the wholesale and retail versions of the CBDC since 2022. India is now seeking to expand its use as it works to increase digital payments and widen the use of central bank money.
Sitharaman also pointed to the role CBDCs can play in settling financial transactions. She referred to REC Ltd.’s tokenised corporate bond pilot completed on Monday under SEBI’s regulatory sandbox, saying the bond and the digital rupee moved at the same instant.
“In this entire framework, the monetary settlement was possible due to the presence of CBDC,” she said, describing tokenisation as a “defining development of our financial architecture.” Larsen & Toubro and IIFL Finance later completed additional tokenised issues in the same pilot window.
India looks beyond local payments
Separately, India has been discussing wider use of central bank digital currencies and local-currency settlement for cross-border payments ahead of the BRICS leaders’ summit in New Delhi on September 12–13.
Officials have said the grouping will continue looking for ways to make cross-border transactions faster and cheaper, including through greater use of local currencies for trade and investment. New Delhi has favoured linking national systems and CBDCs rather than a single bloc-wide payments network.
India tightens its crypto rules
Meanwhile, this push comes as India continues to set rules for private digital asset platforms. On September 9, the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) issued non-compliance notices to 15 virtual digital asset service providers under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
The platforms named include Weex, Blofin, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, Rezorex, XT.com, Latoken, WOO X, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, FixedFloat, WhiteBIT and Guardarian. The agency also issued notices seeking the removal of their applications and URLs from public access, saying they were found to be operating illegally in India without complying with relevant PMLA provisions.
India expanded its anti-money-laundering framework in March 2023 to cover virtual digital asset service providers operating in the country, including offshore platforms. The requirements include registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit as well as reporting and record-keeping duties.
Crypto firms adjust to rules
Moreover, crypto platforms have previously restricted or resumed services in India as they worked to meet the country’s regulatory requirements.
For instance, Bybit temporarily restricted services in India on Jan. 12, 2025, while completing its FIU registration, before later restoring full app access the same year. Coinbase also resumed onboarding Indian users after registering with the FIU, while Binance returned to the Indian market in 2024 after paying a $2.25 million penalty.
Also Read: RBI Official Warns on Legal, Privacy Risks in Tokenization