India's ICICI Bank advises against Bitcoin
India’s ICICI Bank has warned users not to use its remittance services for any form of cryptocurrency transactions.
ICICI, which is one of the nation’s biggest financial institutions, clearly expressed its intentions to stop users from using its service for crypto transactions in its latest iteration of the Retail Outward Remittance Application form. The decision deals yet another blow to cryptocurrency users in India. The declaration is based on the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999, the same Act that was previously implemented by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The above remittance is not for investment/purchase of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies/Virtual Currencies (such as Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Dash, Peercoin, Dogecoin, Primecoin, Chinacoin, Ven, Bitcoin or any other virtual currency/cryptocurrency/bitcoin).
The financial titan also urged users to avoid investing in any fiat currency that may have links to previous cryptocurrency investments.
India’s government has maintained a rather uncertain stance towards cryptocurrencies. While the government has not shown any opposition towards blockchain-based financial applications, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) left the decision to ban cryptocurrency transactions with individual banks, and ICICI may be acting on this directive. Furthermore, there were reports that state officials were mulling over classifying cryptos as alternative assets.
