Indian Crypto Exchange Zepbay Shuts Down

Zebpay, one of India’s major cryptocurrency exchanges, announced that their services would be shut down later today. No new orders will be taken after 1600 IST today. “We are stopping our exchange. At 4 PM [IST] 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.” the company stated on their Twitter account.

The company assured their users that all their funds will be returned. All unexecuted crypto-to-crypto orders will be canceled and the tokens will be credited back to users’ Zebpay wallets. The wallet service will still continue to work and customers can deposit or withdraw their coins, according to the company. The company explained that due to the present policy of the Indian government, they would not be able to “conduct business meaningfully”.

“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. As a result, we are stopping our exchange activities.”, the company stated,

Launched in 2015, Zebpay is one of the first exchanges to come out of India. The company started out with an app-only service and became the most downloaded Bitcoin wallet in India. It currently has over 3 million users, as stated on their website, and supports 20 cryptocurrencies with 22 trading pairs. Zebpay was also recently rumored to be in talks to raise additional capital for the company.

The shut down comes after as an unfavorable policy by RBI. RBI, which is the regulatory organization for all bank-related activities in India, has enforced a ban on cryptocurrency to bank transactions in the country back in July 2018. Other exchanges, like WazirX, have gotten around the problem with solutions like peer-to-peer transaction for fiat deposits and withdrawals.