I am not sure when Coinbase was released in India as I have not created the account there and since Hive is not listed there, I was least interested in Coinbase. I mostly use Binance and somewhat Bittrex as well as WazirX to withdraw the amount in Indian Currency.
PC: Pexels.com
Yesterday I was reading a post on LinkedIn where a person showed a screenshot that he has bought an Ethereum from Coinbase using UPI. So, that means Coinbase has started to add the UPI and IMPS payment method in India but still it has not rolled out to all the Indians. Might be they are testing the features with the selected few.
UPI (Unified Payment Interface) is a popular payment infrastructure built with a coalition of retail banks where Indians can very easily transfer money from one bank account to another using a phone number. This has become popular 10 times when the covid arrives and now every small or big shop accepts UPI in India. Now if this is added as a payment method, it will become quite simple for users to buy the crypto of their choice.
This is good for the investors, as they can invest directly from the bank account. As of now, no other exchange has directly connected with the banks because of the ban looming over the digital currency. But with the new law, it is clear that the Government of India has not banned the crypto yet, but again they have not given it as a legal tender as well. So that means investors are free to invest and give handsome tax to the government even though it is not legal in India.
I might create an account in Coinbase if the UPI is rolled out, only to buy the crypto from UPI and send it across to some decentralized exchanges. But if we have to use the UPI we can use the WazirX p2p2 (peer to peer) where I can buy directly USDT from UPI payment and thus buy any coin of my choice. This is how I sell my holdings too, fist I move funds from any exchange to WazirX and then convert it to USDT and then sell it for INR which is directly sent to my bank account through UPI as part of peer to peer.
Though these all things will attract a 1% TDS from 1st April as part of the new law by the Government of India along with that we have to pay 30% tax on the gain.