Google Pay, Walmart-backed PhonePe and Amazon Pay are among five payments companies directly involved in talks to join the Reserve Bank of India’s digital currency experiment and offer transactions via eRupee.
Indian fintech companies Cred and Mobicwik are two other companies that have applied to participate in the eRupee pilot, the people added.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will begin testing eRupee, a digital alternative to physical currency, in December 2022. After an initial surge, eRupee transactions have slowed, reflecting the difficulties central banks around the world are facing in popularizing the digital currency.
Google Pay and Amazon Pay are payment applications provided by Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com, respectively, that enable merchant payments via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is widely used in India.
Initially, the central bank had only allowed banks to offer rupee transactions through mobile apps, but in April it announced that payments companies could also offer e-rupee transactions with RBI’s approval.
According to sources, the payments company is working closely with RBI and national payments regulator National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and plans to expand access to eRupee in the next three to four months.
The sources declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
RBI and NPCI did not respond to emails seeking comment, while five companies declined to comment.
One of the respondents said that transactions in the cryptocurrency rose to over 1 million per day at the end of last year, but have since declined to around 100,000 to 200,000 per day.
A second person said if popular payment companies approve eRupee’s offering, it should expand its user base and increase transaction volume.
Together, these five payment companies account for more than 85% of digital payments through UPI and conduct an average of around 13 billion transactions every month.
The central bank continues to promote eRupee but has no immediate plans to fully launch the digital currency, the second source said.
“The e-rupee is likely to remain in the experimental stage for the next few years,” the official added.
Bhupendra Singh Chundawat is a seasoned technology journalist with over 22 years of experience in the media industry. He specializes in covering the global technology landscape, with a deep focus on manufacturing trends and the geopolitical impact on tech companies. Currently serving as the Editor at Udaipur Kiran, his insights are shaped by decades of hands-on reporting and editorial leadership in the fast-evolving world of technology.