Standards/digital-rupee-qr

Digital Rupee QR

TypeCBDC QR

PrimaryIN

Completeness81%high

Overview

The Digital Rupee (e₹) is the central bank digital currency (CBDC) of India, issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a tokenised digital version of the rupee [1]. Its retail variant, e₹-R, launched as a pilot on 1 December 2022 within a closed user group of customers and merchants [1]. e₹-R behaves like physical cash: it is held in a wallet, denominated in the same values as banknotes and coins (e₹1, e₹2, e₹5 … e₹2,000, plus paisa), and transferred peer-to-peer or to merchants [1].

The defining feature of the e₹ QR layer is UPI interoperability. From 2023, participating banks made e₹-R wallets able to scan and pay against ordinary [[upi-qr|UPI]] merchant QR codes [2, 3]. This means a merchant needs only one QR code at checkout — the existing UPI/BharatQR code — and the customer chooses whether to pay from a bank account (UPI) or from their digital-rupee wallet (CBDC). The e₹ does not field a separate CBDC-specific QR network; it rides India's existing UPI QR rail [3].

History

November 1, 2022 — Wholesale pilot (e₹-W) [1]: the RBI launched the wholesale CBDC for interbank government-securities settlement, with nine banks participating — State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, IDFC First Bank, and HSBC.

December 1, 2022 — Retail pilot (e₹-R) [1]: the retail digital rupee launched in a closed user group of participating customers and merchants in selected cities.

2023 — UPI QR interoperability [2, 3, 4]: previously e₹-R required a separate QR code from UPI, forcing merchants to display two codes. Banks then interlinked the digital-rupee app with the UPI QR infrastructure. HDFC Bank was an early adopter of a UPI-compatible digital-rupee QR; State Bank of India enabled UPI interoperability for its e-rupee from 4 September 2023 [4]. ICICI Bank enabled its digital-rupee app users to pay at merchant UPI QR codes around November 2023 [3].

February 2024 — Offline and programmability [1]: the RBI announced e₹-R would support offline transactions via NFC for low/no-connectivity areas, plus programmable, purpose-bound payments for government transfers and corporate expenses.

Technical specification

The digital rupee uses a token-based architecture for retail (e₹-R), functioning like digital cash, distributed under a two-tier model: the RBI issues CBDC to retail banks and financial-service providers, which circulate it to the public [1]. e₹-R is held in a dedicated bank-provided digital-rupee wallet (distinct from a normal bank account), in the same denominations as physical currency [1].

QR mechanism — UPI interoperability [2, 3, 4]:

A digital-rupee wallet user can scan a standard UPI / merchant QR code and pay using CBDC instead of a bank-account debit [2, 3].
This interlinks the UPI QR infrastructure with CBDC, so the same single QR code at a merchant accepts both UPI and digital-rupee payments — the merchant no longer needs two codes [2].
The merchant-presented UPI QR is the dominant pattern; the consumer selects the e₹ wallet as the payment instrument inside the app.
Because it reuses UPI's QR, the e₹ inherits UPI/BharatQR's interoperable acceptance footprint rather than building a new CBDC merchant network [3].

Offline / programmability [1]: NFC-based offline e₹-R transactions for poor-connectivity areas; programmable purpose-bound spending for targeted disbursements.

Underlying symbology: Standard qr-code (ISO/IEC 18004). The acceptance code is the UPI QR rather than a bespoke CBDC code; UPI QR/BharatQR derive from [[emvco-mpm|EMVCo MPM]]-aligned national specification upi-qr.

Use cases

Retail merchant payments — scan-to-pay against the merchant's existing UPI QR, paying from the e₹ wallet [2, 3].
P2P transfers — wallet-to-wallet transfers of tokenised rupees [1].
Offline payments — NFC offline e₹-R for areas with spotty or no internet [1].
Programmable government / corporate disbursements — purpose-bound e₹ for transfers and expense control [1].

Implementations

Digital-rupee wallet apps are provided by participating banks [1, 4]:

State Bank of India (SBI) — e-rupee app; UPI interoperability from 4 September 2023 [4].
HDFC Bank — early adopter of a UPI-compatible digital-rupee QR [4].
ICICI Bank — digital-rupee app users can pay at merchant UPI QR codes (Nov 2023) [3].
Additional retail-pilot banks expanded the closed user group over time [1].

The wholesale e₹-W is used by the nine launch banks for interbank G-sec settlement [1].

Comparison

vs. [[upi-qr|UPI]] (India's instant-payment rail) — The central comparison. UPI moves bank-deposit money account-to-account; e₹-R moves central-bank money (tokenised cash) wallet-to-wallet. By design they share the same QR code: from 2023 a merchant's UPI QR accepts both, and the customer chooses the source [2, 3]. This deliberate reuse of UPI's ubiquitous QR is the e₹'s main adoption lever — it avoids the merchant-acceptance cold-start that pure-CBDC schemes face.

vs. e-cny-qr (China) — Both retail CBDCs ride the country's existing QR ecosystem rather than fielding a new code: e₹-R via UPI QR, e-CNY via the Alipay/WeChat aggregate QR. India's path is cleaner because UPI QR is already a single interoperable national standard, whereas China must unify multiple proprietary codes.

vs. enaira-qr (Nigeria) / digital-ruble-qr (Russia) — eNaira reuses Nigeria's EMV/NQR base; the digital ruble will route through Russia's NSPK universal QR. All four CBDCs converge on the same pattern: reuse the national QR rail rather than mint a CBDC-only one.

Fun facts

The digital rupee's whole consumer strategy hinges on a single design decision: make the CBDC wallet pay against the existing UPI QR code. Before that, merchants had to display two QR codes — one for UPI, one for CBDC — which guaranteed friction; interlinking the two collapsed it to one [2].

Because e₹-R is tokenised in the same denominations as physical cash (down to paisa), the digital rupee is closer to "digital banknotes" than to an account balance — a deliberate contrast with account-based UPI [1].

Status

Live pilot, scaling. Key metrics [1]:

e₹-W launched 1 November 2022; e₹-R launched 1 December 2022.
February 2023: ~50,000 users and ~5,000 merchants in the retail pilot.
December 2023: reached the 1 million daily transactions target.
March 2025: over 6 million users; ₹1,016 crore of digital rupee in circulation.
UPI QR interoperability rolled out across major banks from 2023 (SBI 4 Sept 2023) [4].
Offline and programmable features announced February 2024 [1].

The e₹ remains in pilot phase but with a clear scaling trajectory, anchored on UPI QR interoperability as its merchant-acceptance strategy [1, 4].

Sources

Deployments

No country reports mention this standard by name.