Coinbase makes India push with support for UPI payments

The world's second largest internet market for the first time in years is starting to get support for payment instruments UPI and IMPS.

Several users noticed on Thursday that the world's largest publicly listed coin exchange's app had added new payment methods in the country, though the scale of the roll out remains unclear. UPI is a payments infrastructure built by a coalition of retail banks.

The change was acknowledged briefly in a support page that has since been taken down. It is not clear at this point if the bank has partnerships with in India to support UPI and IMPS payments. The Reserve Bank of India has put a lot of pressure on banks to avoid engaging with firms that use virtual currencies.

The firm, which maintains presence in over 100 markets, has offered its eponymous coin exchange app in India for several years, but its lack of support for any payment method significantly hampered its utility among users in the country. In many markets including India, Coinbase has a wallet app.

The image is from TechCrunch.

The company has mostly invested in the country. The firm's venture arm backed two of India's most popular coin exchanges.

Pankaj Gupta, a former executive at Google Pay, has been hired by Coinbase as a key role in India. The firm plans to hold an India-focused event on April 7, where many executives including Brian Armstrong are set to speak.

In India, Binance is very popular. According to mobile insight platform App Annie, the firm has over 5 million monthly active users on its eponymous app in the country, and is popular among more tech-savvy audience.

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