Indian SBI to ban payments to crypto exchanges

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The State Bank of India (SBI) has halted payments made with its Unified Payment Interface (UPI) to cryptocurrency exchanges, EconoTimes reported.

The news comes as several Indian banks have disabled remittances to crypto exchanges, according to the report.

SBI bank customers will not be able to transfer funds through the UPI to crypto exchanges to buy crypto, including bitcoin, according to the report.

The SBI’s decision could cause other banks to be reluctant to accept cryptocurrency merchants for integration on their UPI platforms, according to the report.

However, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has said it will not block payments to crypto companies using UPI. Instead, the NPCI said banks should make their own decisions about crypto payments, according to the report.

Wazirx, one of India’s largest crypto exchanges, has spoken out against the SBI’s decision. CEO Nischal Shetty said the company is trying to meet with the SBI and discuss how its decision affects millions of Indians, according to the report.

Digital currency has seen massive changes in its perception. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) this month spoke out on central bank adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Read more: BIS official urges central banks to embrace digital currency

Benoit Coeure, a former European Central Bank official, said on September 10 that those who don’t embrace crypto could run the risk of falling behind.

We should roll up our sleeves and speed up our work on the merits of the CBDC [central bank digital currency] design, he said. CBDCs will take years to deploy, while stablecoins and cryptoassets are already here. This makes the start up even more urgent.

India is among the countries seeking to institute a CBDC, with plans to launch a trial soon.

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NEW PYMNTS DATA: TODAY’S SELF-SERVICE PURCHASING JOURNEY – SEPTEMBER 2021

By the way: 80% of consumers want to use non-traditional payment options like self-service, but only 35% were able to use them for their most recent purchases. Today’s Self-Service Shopping Journey, a collaboration between PYMNTS and Toshiba, analyzes over 2,500 responses to find out how merchants can address uptime and perception issues to meet the demand for open kiosks -service.

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