India promotes the use of digital rupees through welfare pilot programs and advances the BRICS central bank digital currency interconnection plan.

ME News message: On April 24 (UTC+8), India is piloting the use of the digital rupee through about 10 welfare programs. It will distribute approximately $80 billion in subsidies and food benefits via the digital currency e-rupee, aiming to reduce fund leakage and corruption problems, and to provide clearer application scenarios for central bank digital currencies. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India plans to put forward a CBDC interconnection scheme among member countries at the 2026 BRICS summit, with the goal of improving cross-border trade settlement efficiency while reducing reliance on the US dollar. Currently, e-rupee has about 10 million users, with a cumulative transaction volume of $3.6 billion, although its scale is significantly lower than India’s monthly transaction volume of about $300 billion on the UPI system. (Source: MLion)