BENGALURU: In February, when the finance ministry banned banks and common monetary establishments from being part of the bitcoin community, Indians may just now not buy and promote bitcoins, except they'd an in another country account or an in another country relative or buddy who may just transact on their behalf.
Now, to help customers overcome this challenge, cryptocurrency trade Unocoin has introduced an ATM — or a kiosk, as the company prefers to name it — for Indians to shop for and promote bitcoins. The first of those has been installed in a mall in Bengaluru.
The ATM, supplied by ATM-maker NCR, is just like the common financial institution system that we see, however with a few modifications. One of those is that the debit/credit card slot has been disabled, given that banks had been banned from supporting the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Customers of Unocoin and its unit Unodax can deposit or withdraw cash between Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000 per transaction per day, in denominations of Rs 500. The balance that a buyer holds in his/her account can be used to shop for different cryptocurrencies through the ATM.
Unocoin deals with the ethereum cryptocurrency, while Unodax deals with 30 different cryptocurrencies including ripple and litecoin. “We have a buyer base of 13 lakh customers and we are hoping that this will likely ease the ache issues of consumers after the ban,” says Sathvik Viswanath, CEO and founder, Unocoin. Before the ban, Indians may just use bitcoins for more than one purposes, including to shop for present cards on Nafa.in, buy books, song CDs, video games at Padma Book House, and purchase bus tickets.
Today, then again, Indians use it principally when they're in another country, in international locations like Japan that permits bitcoins for use to pay for foods, flight tickets, and film shows. They also use it to shop for goods on foreign web sites comparable to Ali Express. In India, some tech web sites use it to pay freelancers for device evaluations.
All such transactions are mediated through the crypto exchanges. Many, of course, view their bitcoins simply as an funding, hoping to encash them if and when their price rises. Despite the bank-ban in February, Unocoin founder Viswanath says his platform has observed 18% person growth since then, to 13 lakh customers.
“The finance minister’s statement was once very clear. He mentioned, cryptocurrencies don't seem to be criminal tender in India. He did not say unlawful tender. There’s a huge distinction. It simplest method you undergo the risk of your funding and there’s no legislation for the trade,” he says.
Unocoin, which was once founded in December 2013, mentioned the next few kiosks can be set up in Delhi and Mumbai.
“We rebranded it as a kiosk when we realised folks were mistaking it for a normal ATM and trying to withdraw money from it,” Viswanath says.