Coinbase launches rupee on-ramp in India as RBI expands digital rupee pilot

India's digital-money landscape saw two notable developments converge in early June. Crypto exchange Coinbase announced that, starting June 1, its Indian customers can deposit and withdraw rupees directly from their bank accounts using the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), removing a major friction point that had long forced Indian crypto users to rely on intermediaries and informal currency-conversion channels carrying higher fees and scam risk. The company is pairing the new rupee on-and-off ramp with spot and perpetual-futures trading and local INR liquidity, positioning itself for a deeper push into a market analysts estimate is worth roughly $3 billion today and growing quickly. At the same time, the Reserve Bank of India confirmed it is expanding its pilot of the digital rupee, the country's central bank digital currency, to explore both retail and wholesale use cases — including programmable payments that could be tied to specific purposes such as government subsidies or disbursements, and improvements to interbank settlement efficiency. Officials have continued to stress that, even as these pilots expand, India's policy stance remains that cryptocurrencies should be regulated strictly as investment assets rather than treated as legal tender — a distinction likely to keep shaping how both private crypto platforms and the RBI's own digital currency develop through the rest of the year.