India’s finance minister urges Reserve Bank to expand CBDC adoption

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called on the Reserve Bank of India to pick up the pace on its central bank digital currency efforts, pushing for broader adoption of the digital rupee across both wholesale and retail channels. Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai on September 11, Sitharaman framed CBDCs as a critical piece of India’s evolving financial infrastructure. The digital rupee gets a nudge from the top Sitharaman’s address zeroed in on what she called the “money leg” of transactions, particularly when it comes to tokenized assets. In plain terms, when someone buys a tokenized bond, two things need to happen: the asset moves to the buyer, and the payment moves to the seller. The finance minister wants the digital rupee to be the tool that handles that second part seamlessly. Her timing wasn’t accidental. REC Limited, a government-backed infrastructure finance company, recently completed India’s first tokenised corporate bond pilot under SEBI’s regulatory sandbox. The pilot achieved same-day settlement by moving the bond and the digital rupee simultaneously, cutting out the usual chain of intermediaries that typically stretches settlement timelines. ...