CBDC India
CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY (DIGITAL RUPEE – e₹)
Reserve Bank of India broadly defines CBDC (Digital Rupee (e₹)) as the legal tender issued by a central bank in a digital form. It is akin to sovereign paper currency but takes a different form, exchangeable at par with the existing currency and shall be accepted as a medium of payment, legal tender and a safe store of value. CBDC is a digital or virtual currency but it is not comparable to the private virtual currencies that have mushroomed
over the last decade. Private virtual currencies sit at substantial odds to the historical concept of money. They are not
commodities or claims on commodities as they have no intrinsic value.
CBDC can be structured as ‘token-based’ or ‘account-based’. A token-based CBDC is a bearer-instrument like banknotes, meaning whosoever holds the tokens at a given point in time would be presumed to own them. In contrast, an account-based system would require maintenance of record of balances and transactions of all holders of the CBDC and indicate the ownership of the monetary balances.
Considering the features offered by both the forms of CBDCs, a token-based CBDC is viewed as a preferred mode for CBDC-R as it would be closer to physical cash, while an accountbased CBDC may be considered for CBDC-W.
