A little research I did on India's central bank digital currency (CBDC) while writing HRF's financialfreedomreport.org
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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently partnered with fintech firms MobiKwik and Cred to expand the digital rupee (India’s CBDC) using existing payment infrastructure and financial institutions. This includes UPI (Unified Payments Interface), India’s government-owned real-time payment system, which already dominates the country's digital payment sector.
With a combined user base of 180 million, Mobikwik and Cred, both integrated with UPI, will act as entry points for public access to the CBDC through the new “e₹ wallet” CBDC app.
Why does this matter?
Unlike Bitcoin, CBDCs aren’t neutral money — they are programmable, surveilled, and fully controlled by the state, allowing for transactions to be tracked, censored, frozen, or even confiscated at will.
The new e₹ wallet mandates KYC video verification to transact — and while these requirements may seem routine, in a CBDC system, they remove the option of financial anonymity altogether.
The new e₹ wallet imposes strict limits on citizens:
💠₹10,000 per transaction ($115)
💠₹50,000 daily cap ($577)
💠Mandatory video KYC
💠Integration with UPI for tracking every payment
India is already the global leader in digital transactions. In 2022, 46% of all real-time global digital payments happened in India. Further, the digital rupee CBDC peaked at 1 million retail transactions in 2023. Luckily, it has tapered off since.
It's critical to understand that the RBI isn’t just rolling out a CBDC — it’s embedding it into the country's dominant payments infrastructure (UPI), easing in new users and making opting out increasingly difficult.
This all comes as part of India’s stated goal of achieving a cashless economy. Exemplifying this, in 2016, India tried to reduce the use of cash in its economy by demonetizing, overnight, two of its most widely used bank notes.
Further, India plans to export its digital payments model to 20 countries by 2028, integrating UPI internationally. A government-controlled payments network with built-in surveillance powers is a blueprint for financial repression on a global scale.
It has become abundantly clear that CBDCs give governments unprecedented control over individuals' financial activity, such as the ability to freeze or restrict funds instantly, the imposition of negative interest rates, expiry dates on savings, and selective access based on political or social behavior.
Already, India has demonstrated its willingness to take financially repressive measures to suppress political opposition. In the lead up to the 2024 election, the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, froze the bank accounts of its largest political opposition, the Indian National Congress (INC), citing alleged tax violations and leaving the party financially paralyzed mere weeks before the upcoming election.
India has a population of over 1.4 billion, and while the CBDC is still in its pilot phase, its rollout is accelerating dramatically.
Do you want to live in a world where access to your own money depends on government approval?
The writing is on the wall: If India continues this trajectory, financial freedom will be increasingly under threat for billions of people.
#Bitcoin remains one of the few tools left for true financial freedom. The question remains — will Indians be able to use it freely?
