Xavier Kong · · 1 min readCoinbase halted India service due to ‘informal pressure’
US-baseed crypto exchange Coinbase halted its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service in India due to “informal pressure” from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong / Photo credit: Coinbase
Co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said that there were “elements in the government, including at RBI, who don’t seem positive on [crypto],” despite a Supreme Court ruling from 2020 that it cannot be banned in India.
“Basically they are applying soft pressure behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments which might be going through UPI,” said Armstrong during Coinbase’s 2022 first-quarter earnings call.
This also raised concerns about a violation of the Supreme Court ruling, but Armstrong stated a preference to cooperate with the regulator and focus on relaunching.
Coinbase halted its UPI services in India three days after its launch on April 7.
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Editing by Miguel Cordon and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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