“FM Sitharaman Wants a Sharper Digital Rupee, and a Sharper Eye on AI”, BeatsInBrief, 12 Sep 2026.
“Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman used her keynote at the Global Fintech Fest 2026 to push the Reserve Bank of India toward a more ambitious digital rupee, while issuing a pointed warning about artificial intelligence outpacing the safeguards meant to contain it. “I urge the Reserve Bank of India to further advance and also develop what it has initiated through both the wholesale and retail CBDC pilots,” she said, directly linking this call to the newly launched Demat 2.0 corporate bond tokenisation pilot unveiled by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey.
Why the Digital Rupee Suddenly Matters More
For years, India’s digital payments story centred on UPI, and retail CBDC often seemed redundant next to it, fast, free and already ubiquitous. Union Finance Minister Sitharaman’s remarks reframed the question entirely. UPI moves commercial bank money through clearing intermediaries; CBDC is direct central bank money with programmatic finality, exactly what tokenised securities and high-velocity capital markets need for their settlement leg. As she put it, “every tokenisation architecture being tested across the world eventually returns to the foundational question: what is the money leg made of.” Demat 2.0 supplied a live answer during the festival itself: REC Limited, Larsen & Toubro and IIFL Finance jointly raised ₹1,025 crore through bonds settled instantly using wholesale e-rupee via the RBI’s Unified Market Interface, with the bond token and the payment moving simultaneously so neither side is exposed to the other failing.
A Structural Upgrade
This atomic settlement model replaces the older system, where ownership records and payments moved on separate rails and took one to two days to reconcile, exposing all parties to counterparty risk in the interim. Under Demat 2.0, if either leg of the transaction fails, the whole trade aborts automatically and smart contracts now handle coupon payments and redemptions directly into bondholders’ digital wallets without manual processing. Existing investor protections and depository oversight remain fully intact; only the underlying technology has changed. Phase 1, covering institutional primary issuance, is live. Phases 2 and 3, covering secondary trading and eventual retail access, remain pending, with no published timeline yet from either regulator………..”
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