Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Vishwas Patel, Director Infibeam Avenues Limited, Founder CCAvenue Payment Gateway
- Mr. Ajay B Panicker, CEO & Founder, NetPay Limited
- Mr. Kamonasish Aayush Mazumdar, Founder & CEO at Foodieverse
- Mr. Taron Mohan, CEO & Promoter, NextGen Telesolutions Pvt Ltd
- Mr. Ruchir Inamdar, Strategist, Jumper.ai
- Mr. Abhishek Arun, Chief Operating Officer, Paytm Payments Bank
- Mr. Ishan Vaish, India Partnership Manager- Worldwide Developer Relations, Apple
- Mr. Sugata Ghosh, Associate Editor at The Economic Times, BCCL
- Mr. Vineet Tewari, Director, Crescent Payments Private Limited
- Mr. Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous
Well, lately cryptocurrencies have been the talk of the town facing a lot of criticisms. Now check this out which was posted in the last week of April 2021;
- Banks putting pressure to deactivate crypto exchanges. Though the RBI circular mentioned was stayed by SC, banks are increasingly putting pressure on payment aggregators/payment gateways to deactivate crypto exchanges, etc. Also, check this report couple of months back on, Estonia Revokes 500 Crypto Firms’ Licenses After $220 Billion Money Laundering Scandal [1]
- Since RBI did not come up with any circular to revoke its earlier notification following the Supreme Court Mar 2020 ruling, some banks still restrict customers from using accounts to buy or sell cryptos.
- Member states, the above letter from ICICI is not the first and waiting for these VC firms to go to Supreme Court and get an order against any bank.
- Supreme Court lifted the ban but RBI has not changed its stance. Nor is there a communication to banks. Banks are governed by RBI and they will do what the regulator allows. RBI has a cautionary stance against cryptocurrencies but it hasn’t established through a law that cryptocurrencies are banned in India. Rather than having a proper and clear viewpoint, RBI is still waiting to update its stance.
- The broad point here is RBI can prohibit banks from taking proprietary positions in cryptos – such prohibitions also exist for commodities and f&o segment activities. But the settlement of trades under both these continues to be done through banks. The point is should there be a difference for cryptos, given the Supreme Court ruling?
- If you can find out other ways of being part of the ecosystem then they are not exactly stopping you but telling you that they don’t understand the risk that is underlying in the said ecosystem and therefore can’t assess it or control it in any form or manner. This is what is exactly happening, this is just legal risk mitigation.
- And historically RBI deals with unknowns in this exact way till a clear pattern emerges. So entrepreneurs will keep innovating. And they will actually get more fruits from their labor simply because nobody is willing to understand this. There is also not much competition in the space in India. So if you cover yourself legally, you actually have a fairly good chance of success.
- A member opines, “I think rather asking to deactivate, should help to regulate it. The whole world is accepting, there is something that is creating a buzz in a form of blockchain. This would be next-gen currency accepted by all merchants, function on ATMs and crypto banks. This will also create corporate crypto banking too. Fiat currency is also medium, started in the form of receipt. We should be accepting and giving chance to this new era of tech and business, how we accepted others. We accepted the change in the payment domain in lieu of our traditional banking. Hope the government/RBI/ banking will give a thought to regulate and allow it as a line of product.”
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