Zebpay, which used to be one of India’s largest crypto exchanges but is now based in Malta, announced on Tuesday (11 December 2018) the launch of fiat (euro) to crypto trading in 21 European countries.
On 28 September 2018, Zebpay, which was founded in 2015, announced that it had no choice but to halt its exchange services in India (due to an order in April 2018 by India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, to financial institutions not to provide services to any entities dealing with virtual currencies):
“Zeb IT Service Ltd has played a pioneering role as a cryptocurrency exchange in India. Lakhs of Indians took their first step into the world of Bitcoin using the Zebpay app. Your trust has been the pillar of our strength. Despite regulatory and banking problems along our journey, we continued to look for solutions as we did not want India to miss the bus of digital assets that power the public blockchain. However, the recent past has been extremely difficult. The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customer’s, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business. As a result, we are stopping our exchange activities.”
Then, on October 18th, we found out that Zebpay had moved to Malta, the “blockchain island”, a tiny island nation in the European Union highly respect around the world for its forward-thinking approach to regulating blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.
Zebpay’s new trading name in Europe is “Zebpay Europe”. This new exchange would be offering its services only to residents of 21 European countries: Malta, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, and Austria.
Silvio Schembri, the Junior Minister for Financial Services, Digital. Economy, and Innovation in the Office of the Prime Minister of Malta, sent out this welcome message via Twitter:
“Welcome to #Malta. I look forward for the 1st of November for the Maltese regulators to start accepting applications for licensing.”
Initially Zebpay Europe, which offers its exchange services via a mobile app (available for both iOS and Android), was only offering crypto-to-crypto trading to its customers. However, on Tuesday, it announced via a blog post that fiat-to-crypto trading was now available since euro deposits/withdrawals had been enabled:
“Our KYC procedures have already begun. After successful KYC and bank verification, you will be able to deposit and withdraw Euro in your Zebpay Euro wallet via bank deposits. You can trade (buy/sell) Bitcoin (BTC) with Euro on Zebpay exchange. We will soon add more digital assets that can be traded with Euro.”
Furthermore, it seems that there are no trading fees:
“In addition to enabling our Euro (fiat) to crypto deposits/withdrawals and trading, there are zero-fee Euro deposits and zero maker fees + 0.25% reward per transaction for all our traders. Yes, you pay no fees for trading and also make 0.25% more with each transaction!”
Featured Image Courtesy of Zebpay Europe
