India is the most explicit APAC jurisdiction on a single point: the rupee-on-chain answer is the central bank, not a private issuer. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Digital Rupee (e-Rupee, e₹) wholesale pilot has run since November 2022 for settlement of secondary government securities trades, and the retail pilot since December 2022 across sbi, hdfc, icici, Yes Bank, axis and other early participants, with programmable money and offline functionality layered on as of late 2025. Private rupee-pegged stablecoins are not authorised, full stop. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is opening to securities tokenisation through sandbox and consultation work but ships sequentially. Against Singapore the contrast is sharp: where the Monetary Authority of Singapore treats SGD stablecoin issuance as a regulated private activity, India routes the same intent through the central bank.
Regulatory posture
rbi is the lead regulator and the operator of the rails, owning the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007 perimeter that covers UPI, NEFT, RTGS, and the Digital Rupee. Its posture toward private cryptoassets has been hostile-leaning since the 2018 banking circular (overturned by the Supreme Court in 2020). CBDC fits the PSS Act framework cleanly because it is central bank money on a central bank ledger, while a private rupee stablecoin would need either a new perimeter or a recharacterisation the RBI has not been willing to grant.
sebi handles the tokenised-securities slice through sandbox and consultation papers rather than a standalone framework, with mutual funds and AIFs (alternative investment funds) the natural early candidates. The Ministry of Finance owns the tax layer, a 30% charge on Virtual Digital Asset gains and a 1% TDS (tax deducted at source) on transfers above thresholds, both implemented in 2022 and both materially suppressing domestic trading volume. The signal across all 4 bodies is consistent: build rupee-on-chain through the state, channel investor-facing tokenisation through SEBI's existing wrappers, and treat private cryptoassets as a perimeter to police rather than license.
Active pilots
- Digital Rupee wholesale (since November 2022). Settlement of secondary-market government-securities trades across primary dealers and major banks, and the natural cash leg for any future tokenised-bond trial in India.
- Digital Rupee retail (since December 2022). Live across major banks, with purpose-bound payments such as agricultural input vouchers and offline functionality added through the pilot. Volumes have grown materially as of late 2025 but remain small as a share of total retail payments.
- SEBI tokenisation activity. Sandbox participation and consultation papers, with no single named framework yet and mutual funds and AIFs flagged as the early-issuance candidates.
- npci cross-border UPI. Live links with Singapore (PayNow) via NPCI International, plus UAE and a France point-of-sale partnership. Not tokenisation, but the reference point for future e-Rupee corridor work.
- Project Nexus. India is a first-mover central bank partner in the BIS Innovation Hub's multilateral fast-payments interlinking scheme, now run by Nexus Global Payments.
Open questions
- Whether retail e-Rupee converts from pilot to general availability, and on what programmability terms.
- Whether SEBI moves from sandbox to a full tokenised-securities framework, and which asset class goes first.
- Whether the 1% TDS regime persists at current levels, and what that implies for domestic tokenised-secondary-market liquidity.
- Whether agentic-commerce experiments on UPI extend to e-Rupee programmable money, and which regulator owns the line where an AI agent transacts for a verified user.
- Whether NPCI International's bilateral links evolve into a tokenisation-aware corridor, particularly with Singapore.
Related
- Stablecoin types for why the INR private-stablecoin path is closed.
- Tokenisation, defined for the legal-control plumbing.
- hong kong, japan, singapore for comparative regulatory posture.