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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.
Sitharaman also situated CBDCs within a broader technology narrative, pointing to tokenisation, agentic AI, and quantum computing as forces reshaping finance. She was careful to note that speed isn’t purely a virtue, describing AI as a “double-edged sword” in the context of transaction velocity. Faster settlement means faster fraud, faster errors, and faster contagion during periods of market stress.
Where the RBI’s CBDC pilots stand
The RBI has been running digital rupee pilots for several years now, gradually expanding the scope of use cases. The central bank’s efforts now include live transactions with select banks and merchants, programmable welfare applications, and explorations of cross-border payment use cases.
Programmable money is one of the more interesting angles. A CBDC designed for welfare distribution could, in theory, be coded so that funds can only be spent on specific categories like food or education.
The RBI’s 2025-26 report outlined plans for additional scaling and cross-border pilots, signaling institutional momentum even before Sitharaman’s public push. But adoption has been modest so far, partly because the rollouts have been narrow in scope and partly because consumers haven’t had a compelling reason to switch from existing payment rails like UPI.
Why tokenisation changes the calculus
The collaboration between the RBI and SEBI on the bond pilot suggests the regulators are thinking about this holistically. The asset leg falls under SEBI’s jurisdiction. The money leg falls under the RBI’s. Getting both regulators aligned on a single pilot is no small bureaucratic feat in India’s complex regulatory landscape.
Sitharaman’s speech appeared designed to push this alignment further, signaling that the government views CBDC expansion as a policy priority rather than a central bank side project.
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