One of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in India, WazirX, has announced that its Paytm Payments bank account will no longer remain operational, meaning the users won’t be able to carry out transactions on its platform through the bank transfer option for the time being.

Share Market Live

NSE

WazirX said that starting at 11:59 pm on May 20, 2021, INR or Indian Rupee deposits to the Paytm Bank account will not be accepted. In a statement issued for its users, WazirX said, “The bank transfer option using NEFT or IMPS from a bank account remains unavailable. We recommend to opt for WazirX P2P to buy/sell USDT with INR till another payment bank is brought in”.

The bank transfer option for cryptocurrency transactions on WazirX will remain suspended till it finds a new banking partner.

“We're at the finishing stages to add new banking partners and bringing in multiple INR deposit options for our users to deposit funds to WazirX wallet. We’ll update you as soon as we've added them. Thank you for your support.” informed Wazirx in a tweet.

This comes after the Paytm Payments bank announced to stop cryptocurrency transactions from Friday evening. Several banks on Thursday also said that they would no longer deal with crypto exchanges following an ‘informal order’ from the Reserve Bank of India to that effect.

WazirX is not alone to face such a problem; other crypto exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX are also not able to allow UPI payments option for users after the banks and Paytm Payments bank withdrew the transaction facilities.

With the Ministry of Finance exploring options to regulate cryptocurrency transactions in India, apps such as WazirX, CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX are finding it quite troublesome to offer the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for its users.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the UPI real-time payments system, earlier this month refused to ban cryptocurrency transactions in India using UPI and asked the banks to check with their legal and compliance department for necessary steps.

It is now up to the banks to either formulate their own guidelines or wait for the policy from RBI and the Ministry of Finance.