India’s retail central financial institution digital foreign money (CBDC-R) architects are aiming to scale the consumer base of the digital rupee to at least one million customers, and have prioritized fixing the problem of making an offline model, two folks aware of the matter instructed CoinDesk.

“Given India’s population as the world’s largest, we expect to reach the milestone of one million users easily,” one source said, adding the tentative timeline for reaching one million users is three months.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is running both retail and wholesale CBDC pilots. The retail CBDC pilot is active in at least 15 cities with more than 13 banks participating. India’s retail CBDC pilot began on Dec. 1, 2022, and has seen more than 100,000 customers participate in the four months since.

India’s digital rupee was the subject of great interest at a recent meeting of the Group of 20 (G-20) hosted by India in Bengaluru, said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das in a media conference on Thursday. “In reality, an eminent particular person from the worldwide monetary sector went to the extent of complementing the design of our CBDC, including that the one factor he missed within the CBDC was the scent of recent foreign money.”

The RBI had initiated a Hackathon in 2023 to find solutions to some of the challenges around a retail CBDC including improving scalability, increasing transactions per second and solutions for enabling offline transactions.

“This is sort of an unattainable trinity. As on date, you may obtain two aims however not the third,” said another source. “Hopefully, some technological innovation will handle this quickly.”

A digital currency system that can facilitate offline transactions is seen as a way to improve financial inclusion in emerging economies such as India.

The RBI is hoping to conduct offline transactions by testing the use of wearables, cards like debit and credit, bluetooth technology, and a smartphone. Another key concern the RBI is trying to handle is the chance of double spending.

More than 50 proposals have been submitted to the RBI on the cut-off date of March 24, 2023 to resolve the issue of offline transactions, one supply mentioned.

The RBI has additionally been interacting with personal firms to think about options to enhancing scalability, regardless that no partnership has been initiated with any distinguished blockchain-related entities.

The RBI has not introduced a timeline for rolling out a full-scale retail CBDC however has beforehand indicated it was aiming for the tip of the yr.