PayPal-backed Mintoak strikes India’s 1st e-rupee deal, worth $3.5 mn

Indian startup Mintoak, which provides merchant payment services to lenders, said on Tuesday it has bought Digiledge, marking the first acquisition in the nascent central bank digital currency space in a deal that sources said was worth around $3.5 million.

The Reserve Bank of India started a pilot for the CBDC, or e-rupee, a digital alternative to physical currency, in December 2022, and last April, it expanded the scope of transactions to payment firms from having limited it to just banks initially.