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The Indian banks are shutting accounts found to be involved in crypto trading and there has been an increase in such cases. However, the crypto users in the country have found a way to avoid the shut down of their account and still trade in crypto, reported Bitcoin News.
As per the banks, they are simply complying with the Reserve Bank of India, the central bank of the country’s guidelines. Under these guidelines, the banks are prohibited to serve any customer indulging in transactions in cryptocurrency. The publication was informed from a source from Instashift that the banks have been freezing accounts of the customers when they find words like “bitcoin” in the transaction remarks. He cleared that if the customer’s bank account “comes under scrutiny and the bank officers read the crypto keywords in remarks” then the banks will take an action of shutting the account.
The Chief Executive Officer [CEO] of crypto exchange in India Wazirx, Nischal Shetty told the publication:
“Majority of the people understand not to enter such terms in the remarks. So simply avoiding entering anything related to crypto in the payment remarks is more than enough to avoid any problems from banks. There’s no other way for banks to know if a P2P transaction was done to transact in crypto.”
Many people who trade in cryptocurrency in the country, agreed with Nischal’s solution. A Twitter user @Cryptomaniac said that the use of peer to peer transactions without mentioning any crypto remarks could also help and that the individual should carry out the trade in fewer amounts rather than a “heavy transactions”. Peer to peer, an exchange-escrowed peer-to-peer style of trading has been gaining momentum in India, ever since the RBI ban. This service is provided by many crypto exchanges in the country.
Recently, one crypto-user from India posted on Twitter the conditions put forward by the banks and the obligation for the customers to abide by these rule by signing a contract. The banks like Kotak bank and Digibank were called out for it, especially the latter as it sent a message to a customer about freezing the account for tracking crypto related activities.
The statement from the bank read:
“We have observed few transactions in your account with brokers / traders, dealing in virtual currencies. Since these types of transactions are not permitted in India, we are constrained to place a credit freeze in your account. Further as per the extant guidelines, we are required to exit such relationships where transactions with brokers / traders, dealing in virtual currencies are observed.”
However, even after the account closure in one bank, people can open an account in another bank and continue trading or other crypto-activities without mentioning terms that highlight the cryptocurrency market. The Instashift spokesperson told the publication:
“It’s easy to open a new account for a person in India & banks also welcome people to open accounts.”
He also mentioned that people can open various accounts but all of them are linked to the individual’s PAN card, which according to the source is similar to the social security number used in the US.