Virtual currency exchange Zebpay shuts down following RBI freeze

One of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Zebpay has announced that it’s shutting down its exchange business from Friday 4 PM. In a blog post, the company said that all pending transactions will be cancelled and remaining cryptocurrency units will be credit back to user’s wallets.

Even as the company stated that it will continue to run its wallet service, shutting down of the exchange blow is being seen as a big blow to the virtual currency ecosystem in India. The Supreme Court is yet to announce its final stance on the future of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in India after the Reserve Bank of India directed all regulated banks and institutions to stop providing services to all virtual currency exchanges.

“The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business,” Zebpay wrote in a blog post.

Launched in 2015, Zebpay is arguably one of the largest entities in the cryptocurrency business in India. The company states that it has 3 million users across its mobile apps and the platform supports 20 cryptocurrency and 22 trading pairs.

However, with the RBI ban, the going got tough for all cryptocurrency players in India. Even as exchanges tweaked their operation models and started facilitating peer-to-peer transactions through their platforms, transaction volumes from new users flat-lined or fell for most platforms.

Even as other virtual currency exchanges continue to operate and lobby for a favourable regulatory regime, Zebpay said that it tried to navigate the regulatory and banking regime as it wanted the country to not miss the bus on the power of public blockchain.

“At 4 p.m. today (28 September 2018), we will cancel all unexecuted crypto-to-crypto orders and credit your coins / tokens back to your Zebpay wallet. No new orders will be accepted until further notice,” the company wrote in its blog.

Zebpay co-founder Mahin Gupta refused to comment on phone calls from Business Standard.