Pine Labs, a merchant commerce omnichannel platform, on Tuesday announced the acceptance of the digital rupee on its Point of Sale (PoS) terminals in partnership with ICICI Bank, across key retail outlets in Mumbai and Bengaluru.
“Pine Labs’ execution of the digital rupee payment process is completely digital via dynamic QR built within its smart Android PoS terminals,” the company said in a statement.
Also Read: India’s Digital Rupee For Retail: Is It Same As Cryptocurrency? Know How It Will Work For Users
The RBI’s digital rupee, or central bank digital currency (CBDC), is currently live on a pilot basis, for both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) digital rupee transactions. Banks that are facilitating this are State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IDFC First Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and HDFC Bank.
B Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, said, “CBDC or the digital rupee opens up exciting opportunities. It can accelerate the migration from paper-based currency to digital. Pine Labs is happy to partner with ICICI Bank in launching CBDC as a payment option under this pilot run by the RBI.”
Bijith Bhaskar, head (digital channels and partnerships) at ICICI Bank, said, “The introduction of CBDC or digital rupee is a historic milestone in the digital journey of India. India is among the select few countries globally to have its own digital currency. The digital rupee, which is a tokenised digital version of the Indian rupee is a resilient, safe and an additional avenue to users for making payments.”
He added that increased acceptance of the digital rupee would hasten its adoption among customers. “We are delighted to partner with Pine Labs to make Digital Rupee an accepted payment mode at their merchant PoS terminals. This would present a seamless payment option to the users and improve the operational efficiency of merchants with Pine Labs PoS terminals.”
Also Read: Can You Use Digital Rupee Without A Bank Account? Know How Digital Rupee Wallet Works
The controlled retail CBDC pilot is expected to expand to more banks, users, and locations, in addition to more applications. Once formally introduced pan-India as a legal tender, the digital rupee is expected to deliver a reduction in operational costs that go into the management of physical cash, improve financial inclusion, and deliver resilience and efficiency in payment transactions.
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