On July 13, India's largest private lender, HDFC Bank, announced that it had signed up over 100,000 customers and 170,000 merchants to participate in pilot programmes utilising the central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The lender also linked the CBDC, dubbed e-rupee, and United Payments Interface (UPI) for merchants and customers, enabling payments through both CBDC and UPI using a single Quick Response (QR) code, according to a statement from HDFC Bank.

Using blockchain distributed-ledger technology, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) created the e-rupee as a digital alternative to physical cash.

The central bank aims to reach one million CBDC transactions per day by the end of this year, up from 5000-10,000 currently, according to Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar.