Kotak Bank emerges as the first major bank to do business with WazirX, one of India’s largest crypto exchanges.
- ByStartupStory | December 6, 2021
Kotak Bank had emerged as the first major bank to open its doors for the crypto community amid talks of regulation. Leading crypto business WazirX have opened an account on Kotak Bank that will be used to pay and trade on the exchanges. “WazirX has opened an account with Kotak which can be used to receive and pay money to investors trading on the exchange. The account is yet to become operational. Paperwork, KYC and some testing are on,” a source of ET said in a statement.
ICICI told payment gateway operators to deactivate ICICI Netbanking for merchants who were involved in buying or selling cryptos directly or indirectly in May, 2021. HDFC Bank, SBI and Axis Bank also closed its doors crypto payments and vendors. It was only a year ago when WazirX closed its account with ICICI amid caution by the RBI thereby shifting most of its business to MobiKwik.
In March of 2020, Supreme Court set aside a directive introduced by the RBI to ban banks from facitilating payments for transactions linked to cryptocurrency. Banks have been permitted to engage provided they undertake necessary due diligence processes around KYC, AML, CFT, PMLA, FEMA, besides looking at their own financial health and risk exposures.
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