Coinbase suspends payments via UPI in India

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Mumbai | Bengaluru: US-based crypto trading firm Coinbase has temporarily disabled the option to buy cryptocurrencies using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India. «Purchases with this payment method are temporarily unavailable,» Coinbase's mobile application said on Sunday.

Did you Know?

DeFi is enabling developers to create new financial products like decentralised banking, decentralised money markets and decentralised asset management firms

The world's largest crypto exchange, which announced its India entry through a big-bang event held in Bengaluru on April 7, had come under the scanner of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which oversees UPI, after it said it would allow users to purchase cryptocurrencies using UPI. According to an industry source, Coinbase reached out to the NPCI after the UPI operator issued the statement saying it “is not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI”. «They (Coinbase) reached out to NPCI following the clarification. But it means little as clearly cryptocurrency is not a legal tender in India. A regulatory body like the NPCI will not approve it unless it is officially legal,» a person aware of the matter said, adding that the regulatory uncertainty had also led to crypto exchanges using UPI via payment aggregators. “Payment aggregators are partnering with exchanges and are operating through multiple merchant IDs (MID). Informally, they have been told about the current regulations, but there is business interest for them to process these payments for crypto,” this person added. Coinbase declined to comment. An email sent to the NPCI on Coinbase reaching out to it did not elicit any response till