New Delhi, May 2 (IANS): Merchant commerce omni-channel platform Pine Labs on Tuesday announced the acceptance of digital rupee on its point of sale (PoS) terminals in partnership with ICICI Bank.

To begin with, Pine Labs will accept e-rupee across key retail outlets in Mumbai and Bengaluru via dynamic QR, built within its smart Android PoS terminals.

"Central bank digital currency (CBDC) and digital rupee opens up exciting opportunities. Pine Labs is happy to partner with ICICI Bank in launching CBDC as a payment option under this pilot run by the RBI," said B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs.

RBI's CBDC pilot for both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) digital rupee transactions is currently live with leading banks like State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IDFC First Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and HDFC Bank.

The controlled retail CBDC pilot is expected to expand to more banks, users and locations, in addition to more applications.

Once formally introduced pan India as a legal tender, digital rupee is expected to deliver reduction in operational costs that goes into the management of physical cash, improve financial inclusion, and deliver resilience and efficiency in payment transactions.

"We are delighted to partner with Pine Labs to make Digital Rupee an accepted payment mode at their merchant PoS terminals. This would present a seamless payment option to the users and improve the operational efficiency of merchants with Pine Labs PoS terminals," said Bijith Bhaskar, Head-Digital Channels and Partnerships, ICICI Bank.

Incorporated in Singapore, the key investors of Pine Labs include Sequoia India, Actis Capital, Temasek, PayPal and Mastercard.