MUMBAI, Aug 5 (Reuters) - GooglePay, Walmart ( WMT )-backed

PhonePe and AmazonPay are among five payment firms seeking to

join the Indian central bank's digital currency pilot by

offering transactions via the e-rupee, three sources directly

involved in the discussions said.

Indian fintech firms Cred and Mobikwik are the other two

that have applied to join the pilot, the sources added.

The Reserve Bank of India started a pilot for the e-rupee, a

digital alternative to the physical currency, in December 2022.

After an initial surge, e-rupee transactions have declined,

reflecting the struggle central banks globally have faced in

popularising digital currencies.

Google Pay and Amazon Pay are payments applications offered

by Alphabet Inc's ( GOOG ) Google and Amazon.com ( AMZN ),

respectively, that facilitate retail payments over India's

widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Initially, the central bank had permitted only banks to

offer e-rupee via their mobile applications, but in April it

said payment firms could also offer e-rupee transactions via

their platform once approved by the RBI.

Payment firms are working closely with the RBI and National

Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the domestic payments

authority, and are expected to roll out access to e-rupee over

the next three-to-four months, the sources said.

The sources declined to be identified because they are not

authorised to speak to media.

The RBI and NPCI did not respond to emails seeking comment

while the five companies declined to comment.

While transactions using the digital currency had risen to

over 1 million a day late last year, they have since declined

sharply to about 100,000-200,000 a day, one of the sources said.

Allowing popular payment firms to offer e-rupee should help

lift volumes by widening the user base, the second source said.

Together these five payment firms account for over 85% of

digital payments via UPI, which averages about 13 billion

transactions each month.

While continuing to try and popularise the e-rupee, the

central bank has no immediate plans to do a full-scale launch of

the digital currency, the second source said.

"The e-rupee is likely to stay in the pilot stage for the

next couple of years," the source added.