CoinDesk
India's Reserve Bank is running about 10 pilot programs that route portions of the country's roughly $80 billion welfare system through the e-rupee, Reuters reported Thursday, a deliberate bid to give the central bank digital currency a real use case after a slow rollout.
In Maharashtra's Phulenagar village, farmers receive programmable subsidies covering up to 80% of drip-irrigation costs, spendable only at approved vendors. A separate Gujarat pilot aims to onboard all 7.5 million households eligible for subsidized food by June, scaling adoption through targeted transfers.
Why it matters
The e-rupee has grown to about 10 million users from roughly 7 million earlier this year, but cumulative transactions since the December 2022 launch total just $3.6 billion. That is small next to the Unified Payments Interface, which processes about $300 billion each month. Adoption has also been engineered at times: CoinDesk reported in 2024 that HDFC, Kotak Mahindra and Axis Bank credited employee salaries into CBDC wallets to clear the 1 million daily-transactions milestone in December 2023, a level that did not persist. Welfare disbursement is a more durable distribution channel than salary crediting, because the recipient is a real economic actor with a use for the funds — but it still depends on bank and state cooperation to keep the rails warm.
Market impact
The bigger catalyst sits in the geopolitical column. The RBI is pushing the government to advance a proposal at the 2026 BRICS summit to link CBDCs across Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, framing it as a way to streamline cross-border trade and reduce dollar reliance. That framing carries direct political risk: President Trump has threatened tariffs on BRICS countries pursuing dollar alternatives and has already imposed duties on Indian imports partly tied to Russian crude purchases. For the e-rupee itself, the read is bearish at the margin — any tariff escalation pressures the macro backdrop that pilot adoption depends on, while the BRICS linkage, if it ships, would compete with the dollar in trade settlement rather than lift the rupee as a reserve asset.
Frequently asked questions
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How many e-rupee users are there and how much has the CBDC transacted since launch?
The e-rupee has grown to about 10 million users from roughly 7 million earlier in 2025. Cumulative transactions since the December 2022 launch total about $3.6 billion, a small fraction of the $300 billion processed monthly by India's Unified Payments Interface.
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What are the welfare pilots doing differently from earlier CBDC adoption pushes?
Roughly 10 RBI pilots route portions of India's $80 billion welfare system through the e-rupee, including programmable drip-irrigation subsidies in Maharashtra covering up to 80% of costs and a Gujarat food-program onboarding of 7.5 million households by June. Unlike past bank-led salary crediting, recipients are real…
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Why did e-rupee daily transactions spike to 1 million in December 2023 and then fall back?
CoinDesk reported in 2024 that HDFC, Kotak Mahindra and Axis Bank credited employee salaries into CBDC wallets to help clear the 1 million daily-transactions milestone. The level did not persist once the engineered crediting stopped.
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What is the BRICS CBDC linkage proposal the RBI is pushing?
The RBI is urging the Indian government to advance a proposal at the 2026 BRICS summit to link central bank digital currencies across Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The stated aim is to streamline cross-border trade and reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar in settlement.
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How could the BRICS CBDC plan affect India's trade and currency policy?
President Trump has threatened tariffs on BRICS countries pursuing dollar alternatives and has already imposed duties on Indian imports partly tied to Russian crude purchases. Any coordinated CBDC linkage therefore carries direct geopolitical and trade risk, and would compete with the dollar in settlement rather than…
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