Bachhe Lal Sahani, a native of Bihar's Vaishali district, sells fruits near the Reserve Bank of India's headquarters on Road in south Mumbai. Last month, RBI officials approached him to start accepting?e-rupee?transactions.
Before getting him on board, the?RBI?officials helped him open a bank account and a digital wallet.
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"It¡¯s been close to a month since I?started accepting e-rupee. So far, two or three transactions worth Rs 300 have been made," 45-year-old Sahani said, as per an Indian Express report.
Sahani said that the volume of e-rupee?transactions is lower in the test phase.?If Sahani¡¯s customers face issues like delays in payments then they switch to UPI payment as it is faster. ¡°There was a customer who paid me Rs 50 for fruit using e-rupee but after some days, the same customer was unable to make the CBDC transaction¡ But once vendors from whom I buy fruit start accepting e-rupee, I will also be able to pay them through CBDC. I have been told that I will be able to pay them through CBDC and that I will be able to withdraw the money from the account once the ATM card comes, which they said will take three months,¡± he said.
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Bacche Lal Sahani is among the 15,000 people chosen by the RBI for its nationwide pilot project on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or e-rupee. Bachhe Lal, as per the India Today report, said he agreed to be a part of the project, realising that the future is digital.
¡°See, Google Pay is already here and the officers told me that I should opt for this as it will be useful in future. So, I agreed. And then my account was made and I was ready for transactions,¡± he said.
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In the issue of the smoothness of transactions, the fruit vendor said that he¡¯s already received a couple of transactions but accepts that the speed is still an issue and that he¡¯s already informed the representatives of the RBI about it. He, however, hopes that as the system is fully activated and the usage count increases, the speed issue will be resolved.
When asked if he had ever been weary of digital transactions, he reportedly said, ¡°Earlier, even if I had to get a small document of mine, I had to rush to Bihar, but now I can get it on my mobile. Today I send money on my phone and do all my transactions over the phone. Life is better this way,¡± he said.
The fruit vendor also added that once the e-rupee platform is ready, he will have another option of payment besides cash and UPI.
¡°But with the advent of these platforms, the business of small vendors like us has gone down. People call for fruits directly through the apps and hardly come here to shop. But even then I will say that the importance of these apps cannot be discarded as they are the future and I am ready to accept and embrace the change,¡± he said.