Bank of India goes live with programmable digital rupee auto-payments

MUMBAI: Bank of India has gone live with user-level programmable digital rupee features and auto-issuance on its Central Bank Digital Currency platform, built with Montran India, the bank and the technology partner said on 29 September 2026.

Account holders can schedule automatic transfers of e-rupees to a beneficiary's CBDC wallet at a fixed amount and frequency, while attaching purpose limits on how the recipient may spend the funds. Once configured, the flow runs without repeating the payment manually each cycle. Purpose-based controls travel with the money rather than sitting only as a bank instruction on the sender side.

The companies say the capability follows Reserve Bank of India and National Payments Corporation of India guidelines. Example uses include parents sending a monthly education allowance to a student in another city, with spend locked to approved categories such as tuition and meals.

From wallet transfer to programmed money

Montran India CEO Julie Esca described programmability as turning the digital rupee from a plain payment instrument into a policy tool, because usage conditions can ride with the currency itself. Bank of India General Manager and CTO Ashutosh Mishra said the feature removes the need to key the same transfer every month and gives customers tighter control over recurring flows.

The launch lands as the RBI expands digital rupee pilots beyond basic wallet transfers into welfare-style disbursement and other programmed uses. Bank of India is among the lenders already in the central bank's CBDC programme as the project moves from narrow pilots toward everyday banking screens.

Auto-issuance on the bank's platform is meant to reduce operational friction when recurring, purpose-bound e-rupee payments are set up at scale inside the bank's own CBDC channel rather than through ad hoc staff processes.

What customers should still verify

Public materials do not list every merchant category that can be locked, the dispute path if a beneficiary cannot spend as intended, or the full fee schedule. Customers who want programmed allowances should confirm category lists in the bank's CBDC app or branch script, test a small transfer first, and keep ordinary UPI or account transfers as backup until they trust the controls.

Programmable CBDC is still a controlled rollout story, not a claim that cash or UPI is being replaced. For Indian households already sending monthly support across cities, Bank of India's live feature is a concrete step: recurring e-rupee with spend rules, on a named bank platform, with quoted executives explaining the design on the record.

Programmable CBDC sits at the crossroads of payments and policy. If purpose codes work as advertised, households gain a cleaner way to send restricted allowances without opening a joint account. If category lists are vague or merchants are sparse, users will fall back to UPI and ignore the feature after one try.

Bank of India's live status matters because many CBDC stories stay stuck at pilot language. A named CTO on the record, a technology partner named Montran India, and a concrete recurring-payment use case give reporters and customers something to verify in the bank's own app rather than in a white paper alone.