Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday (September 11, 2026) urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to further advance its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiatives and sharpen its capabilities with the digital Rupee, amid rapid developments in tokenisation, agentic AI and quantum computing.

The Finance Minister also flagged cybersecurity, urging the financial services ecosystem to pay sufficient attention to the issue and warned that the capabilities of autonomous systems powered by Artificial Intelligence are growing faster.

“I urge the RBI to further advance and also develop what it has initiated through both the wholesale and retail CBDC pilots. Sensing the momentum in this fall and across global markets, the RBI needs to continue to sharpen its capabilities with the digital Rupee,” Ms. Sitharaman said while addressing the Global Fintech Fest 2026.

Ms. Sitharaman said the successful pilot of India’s first tokenised corporate bond demonstrated the importance of CBDC in enabling simultaneous movement of the asset and money legs of a transaction.

“Every tokenization architecture being tested across the world eventually returns to the foundational question: What is the money leg made of?” the Finance Minister said.

The remarks came after REC completed India’s first tokenised corporate bond pilot under the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) regulatory sandbox. According to the Finance Minister, the bond and digital Rupee moved at the exact same instant, with the transaction closing on the day payment was made.

“The monetary settlement was possible due to the presence of CBDC. It also shows the synergy between the two regulators RBI and SEBI,” Ms. Sitharaman said.

The Finance Minister said tokenisation could eliminate unnecessary intermediaries and make asset transfers almost instantaneous, but cautioned that greater transaction speed also means errors, fraud and market shocks could spread at the same pace.

She also highlighted the need to balance efficiency from emerging technologies with systemic-risk safeguards, particularly as agentic AI and quantum computing gain traction.

The Finance Minister proposed setting up a federated industry platform bringing together the broader Indian technology ecosystem to give the sector a credible collective voice internationally and help companies navigate cross-border regulatory barriers.

“There may therefore be merit in considering a federated industry platform that brings together the broader Indian technology ecosystem, not to speak over individual communities, but to give the sector a credible collective voice internationally,” the Finance Minister said.

“Such a platform could engage foreign governments and regulators, identify areas for interoperable standards, share best practices on data and cybersecurity, help companies understand licensing environments and represent Indian industry in framing international rules for emerging technologies,” she added.

She warned that autonomous cyber capabilities powered by Artificial Intelligence may be advancing faster than the mechanisms designed to control them, underscoring the need for stronger safeguards as AI adoption accelerates.

“A leading lab, I’m not naming here, now judges autonomous cyber capability to be moving faster than its existing controlling mechanisms,” the Minister said, adding that “the controls that they put in place are not catching up.”.

She also cautioned that “AI acts as a double-edged sword. It helps spot fraudsters and fraud faster, but it also allows attackers to automate larger, more sophisticated cyber attacks.”

The RBI’s reported moves towards encouraging India’s BRICS partners to link their digital currencies with the RBI’s own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) are sensible but one that could pose some risks. According to news reports, the RBI has recommended to the Centre that a proposal connecting the CBDCs of the BRICS countries be made part of the agenda for the 2026 BRICS summit in India. This is a natural progression of India’s push during its presidency of the G-20 in 2023 for international cooperation and standardisation on cryptocurrencies. The RBI has historically been extremely conservative about private cryptocurrencies, repeatedly calling for a ban, and progressive about CBDCs, arguing that they have multiple uses. Its stance seems largely correct — it recognises the evident risks of cryptocurrencies as assets to invest in, but sees the advantages of the blockchain as the backbone of payments infrastructure. While a ban on private cryptocurrencies seems extreme, their widespread adoption does expose the public to extreme volatility, fraud potential, and an erosion of wealth. CBDCs have the advantage of a sovereign guarantee and are also not interest-bearing. They are not only safe but will also not attract people looking to make returns. That said, India in particular has little use for a domestic CBDC. As digital payments go, the UPI infrastructure has proven to be excellent but has also far too big a headstart for CBDC to overcome. This is why the RBI’s attempts to use CBDCs for international payments are a sensible approach.

Cross-border payments are a significant channel for black and laundered money. Any attempts to bring further transparency to such flows are welcome. Blockchains are excellent instruments for this purpose. They form transparent and immutable records of transactions and can be coded to provide relevant details such as the points of origin and destination. A BRICS agreement on such a payment infrastructure could further mandate that payments be linked to national identity numbers or tax departments. CBDC payments would also help ease some of India’s stickier international payments issues. Payments to Russia and Iran, for example, will become easier since the SWIFT network is not available to either country. On the other hand, exactly such payments and the related move away from the dollar will inevitably anger U.S. President Donald Trump. He has already warned of additional tariffs on BRICS countries should they move away from the dollar. That said, with 50% tariffs in place, India needs to see whether incremental tariffs will actually hurt. The benefits of cross-border CBDC payments could still outweigh the costs.