Under the Odisha government’s Subhadra Yojana, CBDC has been used as a payment channel for around 88,000 beneficiaries so far
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The value of central bank digital currency or E-rupee in circulation increased by 334 per cent on-year to 1,016 crore in FY25, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report.
Further, under the Odisha government’s Subhadra Yojana, CBDC has been used as a payment channel for around 88,000 beneficiaries so far. Discussions are underway with multiple Central government ministries and State governments for leveraging programmability feature of CBDC to transfer funds to beneficiaries with a defined end use, said the RBI.
The programmability use cases of CBDCs include direct benefit transfers to farmers against generation of carbon credits, and loans to tenant farmers under Kisan Credit Card (KCC) in select locations.
“Bilateral cross-border CBDC pilots with select countries are being actively explored and progress has been made in finalisation of roadmap, technical aspects and use cases. The Reserve Bank’s participation in multilateral CBDC initiatives, particularly under the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, are also being considered,” said the RBI.
Further, as on March 31, 2025 the RBI’s unified lending interface (ULI) platform has recorded 44 lenders,using over 60 data services for 12 loan journeys including KCC loans, digital cattle loans and MSME loans. Based on the learnings and the positive response from stakeholders, the scope and coverage of the platform are being expanded to include more products, data providers and lenders.
Published on May 29, 2025
