Banking curbs force crypto exchange Zebpay to halt trading

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume Zebpay has announced on Friday that it will be halting its trading service later on the same day.

The Ahmedabad-based company put out a tweet saying that all exchanges services will be frozen and all unexecuted orders will be cancelled, following which funds will be credited to all customers’ wallets.

We are stopping our exchange. At 4 PM 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.

— zebpay (@zebpay) September 28, 2018

In a blog post, Zebpay explained: "The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully." It added that that, since the ban, it had tried various alternative measures to ensure services for its customers but the recent months were ‘extremely difficult.’ However, it added that its wallet service will continue to function even after the exchange closes.

In April, the RBI barred domestic banks from dealing with or providing financial services to any individual and/or business entity dealing in cryptocurrency. Following this announcement, Zebpay had unsuccessfully mulled moving its head office to countries like Singapore, Belarus or the US, which are cryptocurrency-friendly.