Reliance Retail, the biggest retailer operating in India, has declared a strategy to embrace payments in the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC). The respective move could enhance the CBDC adoption across the jurisdiction of the country.
Reliance Retail has collaborated with ICICI Bank, Innoviti Technologies (a fintech platform), and Kotak Mahindra Bank, to provide support for India’s digital rupee.
Reliance Retail of India to Embrace the RBI-Issued Digital Rupee
As per the reports, the CBDC will be supported by the retail chain across India stores. As per a report issued by TechCrunch, consumers will be offered a QR code for the adoption of the digital rupee.
The clients can scan the respective QR code to perform a payment. As mentioned by the reports, the platform has introduced support for Indian CBDC in the Freshpik series of stores.
The platform has a strategy to expand the CBDC adoption throughout the rest of the stores in the coming time. Reliance Retail’s director named “V Subramaniam” reportedly stated that this is a historical initiative.
Subramaniam said that this endeavor enable them to pioneer the acceptance of digital currency at their stores while attempting to further the systematic vision of the country to provide another option to the clients.
He added that as more consumers show enthusiasm to transfer digitally, the country’s initiative will assist them to give another secure and effective method of payment to clients at their stores. The central bank of India has long been supporting central banks-based digital currencies.
The country has categorized CBDCs as the economy’s future. The country initiated a pilot project for a digital currency in the previous year’s November in collaboration with 9 banks.
The Reserve Bank of India expects to minimize the reliance of finance on cash. In addition to this, the institution is also endeavoring to provide smoother and cost-effective settlements on the international level.
The biggest Indian bank additionally wants to shield the people from the private crypto assets’ volatility with the use of its digital rupee. As planned by the central bank, it will experiment with CBDCs for wholesale transfers and payments across borders.
The digital rupee of India can play the role of a game changer. The project can even bring about a digital revolution in the world of finance, as per Deepak Sharma (Kotak Mahindra Bank’s chief digital officer and president). He reportedly mentioned that the respective project offers a rapid, secure, and effortless way to carry out digital transfers at stores of Reliance Retail.
On the contrary, the Indian reserve bank has been expressing a hostile approach in the case of digital assets for a considerable time. The chief argument against the respective asset class has been that there is no intrinsic value to digital assets.
The central bank has frequently been cautioning investors as well as the authorities against digital assets. It additionally cited scams, frauds, risks, and volatility to be the other vulnerabilities of digital assets.
RBI Governor Criticizes Digital Assets for Having No Intrinsic Value
In the previous month, Shaktikana Das (the governor of the Reserve Bank of India) brought to the front that the crypto assets do not have any underlying value. He added that they do not even have the worth of a tulip, referring to the prominent tulip mania of Dutch origin that blew up in the previous century’s early part.