Indian Bitcoin Exchange Leader Zebpay comes to a Halt

Zebpay is app-enabled bitcoin wallet provider headquartered in Singapore with IT office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The firm has announced the cessation of all exchange services on Friday due to the Central bank’s banking ban on the crypto industry.

Zebpay quickly became popular among the crypto traders with its app-only enabled services. The application became one of India’s most-downloaded bitcoin and exchange apps. The firm through its app had 200,000 new users already joining the platform and forecasted up to half a million new users joining the platform every month at the time. The Zebpay app has 3 million users using its iOS and Android apps which supports 20 cryptocurrencies and 22 trading pairs, as indicated on their website. Zebpay with its know your customer (KYC) model struck half a million downloads on Android in mid-2017.

Zebpay is stopping all its exchange service as a reflection of the incapacitate policy introduced by India’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to force all regulated financial institutions – including banks – from offering services to the domestic cryptocurrency industry. Just before this Zebpay was in rumours to raise an additional $4 million in funding at one stage.

According to Zebpay, all unexecuted crypto-to-crypto orders will be cancelled and all the token would be credited back to customers’ wallets. The customers will continue to use the wallet service so they may deposit and withdraw their coins.

Zebpay further added,

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.

We are stopping our exchange. At 4 PM today, we will cancel unexecuted orders & credit your coins to your Zebpay wallet. No new orders will be accepted. The Zebpay wallet will work even after the exchange stops.

Read more: https://t.co/W8ygzPIYz1 pic.twitter.com/tPWCnyu7Yu

— zebpay (@zebpay) September 28, 2018

Zebpay, in the late June, had already warned about the fiat withdrawals that it could soon become impossible even before the banking ban that took effect on July 5, 2018. While the other exchanges are finding ways to encompass the ban, Zebpay, a day before the banking freeze ceased all fiat deposits and withdrawals at the exchange.