Google, PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Cred and Mobiwik are looking to join Indian central bank’s digital currency project by offering transactions in e-rupee, a digital alternative to the physical currency.

The news comes as transactions using the digital currency to over a million a day last yeat, however, they have declined ever since, to about 100,000-200,000 a day.

The move appeared to be a bid to increase transactions volumes by widening the user base.

At the time of its launch, only banks could offer e-rupee via their mobile applications. However, in April the RBI said that payment firms could also offer e-rupee transactions via their platforms once they received approval from the central bank.

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Google Pay and Amazon Pay are payment apps from Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com which facilitate retail payments using the country’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Together with Cred and Mobiwik, that payment apps represent over 85% of the figital payments volume facilitated using UPI.

The digital rupee was launched as an alternative to physical currency in December 2022.