According to Foresight News, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working with lending institutions to introduce new features aimed at popularizing the central bank's CBDC digital rupee. These features include allowing customers to conduct digital rupee transactions offline and linking the digital rupee with India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI). UPI is an instant real-time payment system that enables users to transfer money between multiple banks without disclosing their bank account details. The RBI has been urging banks to make the digital rupee interoperable with UPI through QR codes.

An insider revealed that private lending institution HDFC Bank is collaborating with technology company IDEMIA to build an offline CBDC transaction version for feature phones. Currently, the average daily retail transaction volume for India's CBDC is close to 18,000, far below the RBI's target of 1 million transactions per day by the end of 2023.