India’s CBDC Moment: From Digital Cash to Programmable Money (S&P)
According to a recent S&P Global report, India’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee, should be judged on programmability and settlement efficiency, not retail wallet adoption. Retail transactions lag significantly behind the ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI). However, the digital rupee could become a foundational layer of India’s digital public infrastructure by functioning as programmable money for targeted policy outcomes. Furthermore, its most substantial economic promise lies in wholesale markets, where it could facilitate atomic settlement for tokenized assets and reduce cross-border payment friction. And in a potential tokenized global economy, the digital rupee could prevent a shift of cross-border business-to-business trade and remittances toward foreign-currency stablecoins. [S&P]
Digital Pound Lab: Phase 2 Update (BoE)
The Bank of England (BoE) updated its webpage dedicated to Phase 2 of its Digital Pound Lab that concluded in July 2026. BoE-developed use cases demonstrated included one-time aliases for privacy-preserving payments, confirmation of payee, group “kitty” payments using conditional locks, external service interface provider connections enabling third-party app integration, allowances extended to e-commerce, and usage-based streaming micropayments. Eleven private sector participants tested additional use cases that the latest update fleshed out in more detail. These included Crunchfish demonstrating deferred offline payments with a reserve-pay-settle lifecycle and double-spend controls, and TECHT Labs demonstrating conditional business-to-business payments via smart contracts. Interestingly, one of the participants listed in the June 2026 update (Focus on Monesave) was quietly dropped. The BoE explicitly disclaimed policy endorsement of any participant designs, or endorsement of the firms, their products or services. [BoE]
BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.
FYI I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.
