Major Indian crypto exchanges CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX have suspended rupee deposits for the purchase of cryptocurrency using UPI, a widely used state-backed payment system, drawing users to raise concerns on social media.

This comes after a statement last week by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) saying it was not aware of any crypto exchange using its Unified Payment Interface (UPI) framework, which simplifies bank transfers.

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On Wednesday, the CoinSwitch app was not allowing users to make deposits, while rival exchange WazirX said on Twitter, “UPI is not available,” adding that it had no estimated time to fix the issue with UPI deposits.

“You have closed the INR deposit without any information. At least let us know how long it will be closed,” a Twitter user, Avijit Debnath, asked CoinSwitch on the social media platform.

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According to a Reuters report, the decision by CoinSwitch to disable UPI acceptance resulted from “regulatory uncertainty” after the NPCI statement.

While exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber have temporarily blocked all rupee deposit services, including UPI and bank transfers via NEFT, RTGS and IMPS, others are still showing the netbanking option for INR deposits to buy crypto but the list of supporting banks is very small.

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In February 2022, the government decided to tax gains from cryptocurrencies and other digital assets at 30%.

“Regulatory clarity is the need of the hour. There are currently a lot of conflicting signals on the regulatory regime, leading to a lack of certainty,” said Abhishek Malhotra, a founding partner of TMT Law Practice.

In October 2021, CoinSwitch had raised over $260 million, at a valuation of $1.9 billion, underlining the rise in popularity of crypto trading.

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No official data is available on the size of the Indian crypto market, but as per industry estimates the number of investors is between 15 million and 20 million, with total holdings of around Rs 40,000 crore ($5.25 billion).