Leading Indian crypto exchanges such as CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX have disabled rupee deposits for the purchase of cryptocurrency using United Payments Interface (UPI), spurring users to voice concern on social media, Reuters has reported.
The decision follows a statement last week by the National Payments Corporation of India saying, it was not aware of any crypto exchange using its UPI framework.
On Wednesday, CoinSwitch's app was not allowing users to load deposits, while rival exchange WazirX said on Twitter, "UPI is not available," adding that it had no estimated time to fix the issue with UPI deposits.
The decision by CoinSwitch to halt UPI acceptance resulted from "regulatory uncertainty" after the NPCI statement, the report quoted an industry source as saying.
While exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber have temporarily disabled all Rupee deposit services including UPI and bank transfers via NEFT, RTGS and IMPS, others are still showing netbanking option for INR deposits to buy crypto but the list of supporting banks is very small.
India decided in February to tax income from cryptocurrencies and other digital assets at 30%, signalling that authorities accepted digital currencies, but uncertainty over regulation has weighed on the industry.
