How Mintoak’s Digiledge Deal Impacts e-Rupee Adoption

By Pune Media On Mar 5, 2025

Indian merchant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform Mintoak has acquired Digiledge, a fintech company specialising in billings and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)-based solutions, according to a Reuters report.

Mintoak, backed by HDFC Bank and PayPal, purchased Digiledge for approximately $3.5 million. The report referred to the deal as the first of its kind in India’s still-nascent CBDC payments ecosystem.

Why it Matters

CBDC, also known as the e-rupee, is a digital currency issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as an alternative to the physical rupee. While the Central Bank ran a pilot for this back in 2022, in April, 2024 it broadened the scope of payments carried out using CBDC, bringing payment companies under its purview.

This deal will now allow Mintoak’s partner banks, including Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and the State Bank of India, to offer CBDC-based payment solutions to their clients, Mintoak stated in the report.

The company is currently used by over 3 million merchants. It reportedly has a merchant application white-labelled for banks, that allows both merchants and shopkeepers to accept payments and access other services.

How effective is CBDC?

Medianama has previously covered the unveiling of CBDC wallets by fintech companies Cred and Mobikwik, and also highlighted concerns about the effectiveness of the payments system considering the existing prevalence of the Unified Payments System ecosystem, including from former RBI Deputy Governor SS Mundra who had suggested that it did not serve any special purpose.

Queries

We have reached out to both Mintoak and Digiledge for insights on how they view the acquisition in the context of e-rupee payments.

For Mintoak:

Does Mintoak plan to integrate payments using e-rupee in its operations following the acquisition of Digiledge? If so, Would the e-rupee work for/affect merchant payments?
When it comes to catering to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), how is CBDC interoperability likely to play out?
What strategies does Mintoak have in mind, if any, for the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) ecosystem that Digiledge is already a part of? Does it expect the CBDC payments to increase on this front?

For Digiledge:

How will the e-rupee work for/affect merchant payments?
Following the acquisition, to what degree will Digiledge’s CBDC payment services be integrated into Mintoak’s platform?
Among retail and merchant payments, which category does Digiledge expect to face a larger payment surge in, if any, after the acquisition?
How does payments via CBDC help users, considering there already exists a stable UPI payments ecosystem? Does Digiledge take this into consideration?

We will update the story if and when we hear back from the companies.

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