Story Highlights

• Coinbase receives FIU registration, indicating plans to restart retail business in India.
•  India’s crackdown on unlicensed offshore exchanges created a market opportunity for Coinbase to re-enter.
•  Stricter rules and taxation continue to influence India’s unclear cryptocurrency landscape.

Having stayed away from the Indian market for almost two years, Coinbase has finally registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), a major milestone on the path to restarting operations in the country. The exchange plans to resume retail services later in 2025, although it has not mentioned a specific time frame.

Coinbase had first rolled out its Indian trading platform in April 2022, via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for smooth transactions. But the service didn’t last long. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) later said it was not aware of any crypto exchange that had utilized UPI, effectively shutting Coinbase out of India’s most used digital payment system.

Coinbase Obtains FIU Registration for India Return

The exchange subsequently reported that it received informal pressure from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which would have probably influenced it to suspend services. The crypto laws in India are still not clear, and the government has not yet issued all-encompassing digital asset regulations. Regardless of this, burdensome taxation, 30% taxation on crypto profits and 1% tax deducted at source (TDS) when transferring has increasingly rendered trading in India inconvenient. 

In early 2024, India acted tough on offshore exchanges that had not been following anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. Binance, KuCoin, and OKX were shut down in India for not adhering to the registration requirements at FIU.

Coinbase’s comeback can redefine India’s cryptocurrency market, particularly following local exchange WazirX losing almost half its reserves due to a security breach last year. Further, Indian exchanges such as CoinSwitch and CoinDCX, both of which are financed by Coinbase, could gain from the firm’s return.