Khushi V Rangdhol
Jun 22, 2025 21:02
India’s offline e-rupee pilot targets 400M feature-phone users in low-connectivity areas. With ₹2K/wallet limits & Bluetooth sync, it aims for disaster-proof payments. Success could make it the 1st scalable feature-phone CBDC.
India’s central-bank digital currency (CBDC) moved out of metro pilot zones in late-2024 and is now being tried in districts with weak or intermittent data service. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) says these “offline-capable” e-rupee trials are crucial if a digital token is to match the reach of physical cash.
Where the project stands
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User base and banks. RBI deputy governor T. Rabi Sankar told reporters on 24 May 2025 that the retail pilot had “about six million users working through 17 banks.”
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Value outstanding. The RBI Annual Report 2024-25 puts retail e-rupee in circulation at ₹130 crore (≈US $16 m) as of 31 March 2025.
Those numbers are small beside UPI’s 13 billion monthly transactions, yet the new focus—no-signal transfers—targets an audience that QR codes and data plans miss.
Why “offline” is a headline feature
Around 400 million feature-phone users remain in India, according to TRAI subscription data for December 2024. Network quality drops to 2G or vanishes entirely in parts of Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and the North-East. In a February 2024 Monetary Policy Committee briefing, Governor Shaktikanta Das said the next CBDC phase would add “programmability and offline functionality so that the digital rupee can be used in areas with little or no connectivity.”
An offline mode also strengthens disaster resilience. After Cyclone Yaas hit Odisha in 2023, whole blocks of ATMs and mobile-data towers were out for days; RBI officers argue a Bluetooth-based e-rupee would allow aid payments when other systems fail.
How the new pilot works
Banks participating in the offline test—public filings list State Bank of India, Canara Bank and IDFC FIRST—issue feature-phone wallets that rely on:
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SIM-tool-kit menus—similar to older USSD banking codes—for send and receive.
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Bluetooth Low Energy beacons when two phones are close enough.
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Delayed settlement: transaction records sync to the RBI ledger when either device reconnects to a 4G or Wi-Fi signal.
An internal circular seen by The Hindu BusinessLine (3 April 2025) caps offline transfers at ₹2 000 per wallet to limit double-spend risk. The same note lists Balasore (Odisha) and Banka (Bihar) as trial districts; the RBI has not published a public district list.
First-quarter findings as disclosed
The RBI has not released transaction counts, but one participating bank, speaking to Economic Times (18 June 2025), said roughly one in five enrolled households used the wallet at least twice in the first 60 days. The bank reported a sync-failure rate “under 10 percent,” meaning some transfers had to be reversed when ledgers reconciled late. These figures have not been independently audited.
Link to government‐payment use cases
In January 2025 the Ministry of Electronics & IT told Parliament that selected central schemes—chiefly fertiliser subsidies—are being “evaluated” for blockchain or CBDC payout rails. No scheme has formally switched to the e-rupee yet, but the Department of Financial Services said in an April consultation paper that a tokenised benefit could reduce leakage if the offline channel proves reliable.
Open questions before a national roll-out
How India compares internationally
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Nigeria. The e-Naira offers limited NFC card functionality but struggled to gain users—only 0.5 % of the adult population, per the IMF (Feb 2024).
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China. The e-CNY has an embedded secure-element for offline payments, but the People’s Bank of China has not yet released rural usage data.
If the RBI can demonstrate low failure rates in true no-coverage zones, it will be the first large emerging-market central bank to prove a feature-phone CBDC at scale.
Outlook
The RBI says results from the hinterland pilot will feed into a decision on wider deployment in FY 2026. Success would give India a uniquely versatile digital cash instrument: programmable, instant, and usable even in a network blackout. Failure—or persistent sync errors—would strengthen the argument that the existing UPI system, paired with cash, already covers most practical needs.
Either way, the data coming out of Balasore and Banka over the next six months will shape whether the e-rupee becomes a universal payment rail or remains an interesting but niche experiment.
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