Ahmedabad: HDFC Bank today announced the integration of the Reserve Bank of India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the Digital Rupee (e₹), into its online merchant payment platform, SmartGateway. This integration enables merchants to offer customers a secure, zero-cost, and sovereign-backed digital payment option within the HDFC Bank checkout ecosystem.

With this enhancement, SmartGateway merchants can now accept payments via the Digital Rupee at zero transaction cost, alongside existing payment modes such as UPI, cards and net banking. Customers benefit from a seamless digital payment experience that is both instant and secure.

As of December 2025, HDFC Bank is one of the pilot banks servicing ~8.45 lakh registered CBDC wallets, with 13,000–15,000 new wallets getting added every month.

With zero-cost acceptance, CBDC offers merchants a future-ready, intermediary-free payment method that improves settlement certainty and reduces operational overheads. For consumers, the Digital Rupee offers the convenience of UPI with the added trust of RBI-backed digital currency, making every transaction fast, secure, and free.

By integrating CBDC into SmartGateway for merchants, HDFC Bank is offering customers yet another way to make payments, and extending the benefits of a sovereign-backed digital currency to a wider set of businesses. This initiative reinforces HDFC Bank’s position as a digital-first leader and reflects its continued commitment to innovation and to supporting India’s transition towards a cash-light, inclusive digital economy, an official press release said. DeshGujarat