Google, Amazon, Walmart seek to join RBI's digital currency project

The Reserve Bank of India started a pilot for the e-rupee, a digital alternative to the physical currency, in December 2022. After an initial surge, e-rupee transactions have declined, reflecting the struggle central banks globally have faced in popularising digital currencies.

Mumbai: GooglePay, Walmart-backed PhonePe and AmazonPay are among five payment firms seeking to join the Reserve Bank of India's digital currency pilot by offering transactions via the e-rupee, three sources directly involved in the discussions said.

Indian fintech firms Cred and Mobikwik are the other two that have applied to join the pilot, the sources added.

The RBI started a pilot for the e-rupee, a digital alternative to the physical currency, in December 2022. After an initial surge, e-rupee transactions have declined, reflecting the struggle central banks globally have faced in popularising digital currencies.

Google Pay and Amazon Pay are payments applications offered by Alphabet Inc's Google and Amazon.com, respectively, that facilitate retail payments over India's widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Initially, the central bank had permitted only banks to offer e-rupee via their mobile applications, but in April it said payment firms could also offer e-rupee transactions via their platform once approved by the RBI.

Payment firms are working closely with the RBI and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the domestic payments authority, and are expected to roll out access to e-rupee over the next three-to-four months, the sources said.

The sources declined to be identified because they are not authorised to speak to media.

The RBI and NPCI did not respond to emails seeking comment while the five companies declined to comment.

While transactions using the digital currency had risen to over 1 million a day late last year, they have since declined sharply to about 100,000-200,000 a day, one of the sources said.

Allowing popular payment firms to offer e-rupee should help lift volumes by widening the user base, the second source said.

Together these five payment firms account for over 85% of digital payments via UPI, which averages about 13 billion transactions each month.

While continuing to try and popularise the e-rupee, the central bank has no immediate plans to do a full-scale launch of the digital currency, the second source said.

"The e-rupee is likely to stay in the pilot stage for the next couple of years," the source added.