INR Withdrawals Update: January 7, 2018

The truth behind the unexpected delay

At the outset, we thank you for your continued love and support of Koinex, India’s first and largest multi-cryptocurrency exchange. Undoubtedly, the past year was a landmark one for cryptocurrencies for the way it has captivated the imagination of the global populace. On the other hand, regulators world-over, have struggled to understand the underlying blockchain technology and develop an appropriate response to it; and India is no exception. These misgivings have resultantly affected the financial services community, who find it difficult to make up their mind about supporting cryptocurrencies, eventually causing organisations like Koinex and its users to bear the brunt.

Discovery and recovery

In the past few days, many of our users have faced difficulties with INR withdrawals on Koinex. A tussle between our payment service partner and their bank has caused an indefinite delay in the settlement of a large portion of deposits to Koinex in the past 2 weeks. This created a bottleneck in the cash flow of user funds, thus hamstringing INR withdrawals on the platform. In these circumstances, we were constrained to temporarily suspend INR withdrawals, until the differences between the payment service provider and their bank are resolved. While we have taken firm action, we are also in constant touch with the payment service provider and are providing our complete cooperation to help resolve the matter at the earliest.

More importantly, we want to inform you that your money is safe. The affected deposits are safely held with the payment service provider’s bank in a nodal account (nodal account is a custodial account where users’ money is safely deposited). INR Withdrawals will resume as soon as the settlement to Koinex is completed. We expect a resolution within this week. It is also clarified that trading activities continue to remain unaffected.

Next steps

We are working on a robust and more reliable solution to bring back INR deposits and withdrawals, ensuring the seamless trading experience that Koinex is known for. These integrations, partnerships and solutions take some time to build, however, we would like to inform you that this is the top priority right now. We regret the turn of events and the inconvenience caused to you. We are committed to improving user experience. We are working with relevant stakeholders to minimise the effect of third-party actions on critical services like deposits and withdrawals.

We thank you, once again, for your continued love, trust, patience and support.

We will continue to post constant updates on the matter, and will also announce the release of our newer solutions. Follow our social media for quick updates on all fronts.