Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra used his platform at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington on 15 October 2025 to call on central banks worldwide to prioritise central bank digital currencies over privately issued stablecoins. Addressing an audience of senior monetary officials and financial policymakers, Malhotra argued that CBDCs offer structurally superior solutions for cross-border payments and that the proliferation of private stablecoins represents a risk to monetary sovereignty that central banks should actively work to contain.
The address placed India prominently in the camp of central banks that view publicly governed digital currencies as the appropriate long-term architecture for the global payments system. Malhotra's intervention at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, one of the most consequential gatherings in the international financial calendar, was calculated to build multilateral consensus for CBDC-led infrastructure at a moment when private stablecoins are expanding rapidly across emerging and developed markets, attracting both retail users and institutional interest.
THE CASE FOR SOVEREIGN DIGITAL CURRENCIES
Malhotra's core argument rested on the premise that private stablecoins, however efficient in facilitating fast and low-cost transfers, introduce systemic risks that monetary authorities are poorly positioned to fully contain. He contended that CBDCs, operating under the direct oversight of central banks, can deliver equivalent or superior efficiency in cross-border settlements without the vulnerabilities associated with privately governed instruments that are not subject to the same prudential standards as licensed financial institutions. The argument draws a clear distinction between money whose integrity is guaranteed by a sovereign authority and digital instruments whose backing and governance may be less transparent or robust.
The distinction between public and private digital money has become one of the defining debates in contemporary monetary policy, and Malhotra's remarks in Washington are likely to feature in ongoing standard-setting discussions at bodies including the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board. Central banks in major economies have reached different conclusions about the pace and desirability of CBDC development, making India's advocacy for an accelerated multilateral approach a notable and potentially influential contribution to the debate.
INDIA'S DIGITAL RUPEE AS A REFERENCE CASE
India's own CBDC programme, the Digital Rupee, provided the practical backdrop for Malhotra's advocacy at the Washington meetings. The Reserve Bank of India has been running pilots of the Digital Rupee across both retail and wholesale segments, accumulating operational experience that Malhotra presented as evidence that a large and complex emerging economy can build functional CBDC infrastructure at meaningful scale. By pointing to India's own experience, the governor sought to demonstrate that the transition from CBDC pilot to broad deployment is achievable within a realistic timeframe for central banks that are prepared to commit resources and political will to the task.
The broader context of the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, which addressed fragmentation risks in the global economy and the imperative for more efficient cross-border payment corridors, gave additional weight to Malhotra's message. Proponents of interoperable CBDC frameworks argue that multilateral architectures built around sovereign digital currencies could significantly reduce settlement costs and currency conversion frictions that currently impose disproportionate burdens on developing economies reliant on remittances and trade finance to sustain their balance of payments.