The chief executive of Coinbase said that the US-based crypto trading firm disabled its Unified Payments Interface or UPI services due to “unofficial pressure” from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
In a strongly worded response, Brian Armstrong said, “So a few days after launch, we disabled UPI due to some unofficial pressure from the Reserve Bank of India, which is the Treasury equivalent there.”
Speaking on the firm’s earnings call to discuss first-quarter financial results, Armstrong said, “India is a unique market, in the sense that the Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot ban crypto, but There are elements in the government, including the Reserve Bank of India, who are not as positive on it.”
Armstrong said, “And so they, in the press, call it shadowbans; basically, they are soft-pressing behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments, which are going through UPI.” Huh.”
The CEO believes that Coinbase will return in relatively short order to India along with several other countries where they are similarly pursuing international expansion.
Just days after its launch in April, Coinbase removed the option to add UPI as a payment method on its app.
On 7 April, Coinbase announced that it would allow Indian users to use UPI as a payment method to buy and sell crypto.
However, within hours of Coinbase’s announcement, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) stated that it was not aware of any crypto exchange using UPI.
Meanwhile, Coinbase plans to quadruple the workforce in India by the end of the year, the CEO had earlier said in a blog post, adding 1,000 to the existing 300 employees at its Indian tech hub that started last year.
Coinbase, whose shares fell 15% in extended trading on May 10, missed first-quarter revenue estimates and posted losses as turmoil in global markets fueled investor appetite for high-risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. Got restrained.