New Delhi. Governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said permanent removal of transactions could make the e-rupee or central bank digital currency (CBDC) anonymous and at par with paper currency. Speaking at the BIS Innovation Summit, Das said That India is also working on making the CBDC transferable in offline mode along with introducing programmability features to help its financial inclusion goals. It may be noted that since the launch of the CBDC in late 2022, There have been concerns about the privacy aspect, with some saying that the electronic nature will leave a trace of where all the currency has been used, unlike cash which provides anonymity. “Anonymity cannot be enforced by law and/or,” Das said. “The basic principle is that CBDCs can have the same degree of anonymity as cash, no more and no less,” he said. “In the past, RBI officials including Das and his deputy T Rabi Shankar have said that technology provides a solution to such concerns over privacy.
Ahead of the launch of the pilot, former RBI Governor D Subbarao had raised the issue of data privacy in 2021 and said that a CBDC would allow the government or the RBI to access all the data about each unit of currency. used and also called for a strong data protection law to deal with it. Meanwhile, Das reiterated that India is working on making CBDCs transferable even in offline mode, adding that the key features of cash One of them is that it does not require network connectivity to work. In February this year, Das announced the offline and programmability features of the CBDC. Das had then said, “Programmability of transactions for specific/targeted purposes While the offline functionality will enable these transactions in areas with poor or limited internet connectivity.” Speaking on Monday, Das said that despite the efforts being made by the Reserve Bank, the RBI is still not able to use UPI among retail users. (Unified Payment Interface) “We certainly hope this will change going forward,” he said, specifying that the RBI has also enabled interoperability of CBDCs with UPI. Das said That India has made the CBDC non-profitable by making it non-profitable to reduce any potential risk of bank intermediation, Das said the central bank creates the CBDC and banks distribute it. He said, e- To broaden the reach of Rupee, the RBI has recently announced the participation of non-banks in the pilot, with the hope that their reach can be leveraged for the distribution of CBDCs and to provide value-added services. .
