Coinbase Takes Next Step In India With Direct INR Support

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched direct deposit and withdrawal rails for the Indian Rupee (INR), continuing its push into India.

Coinbase Users In India Can Now Make Direct INR Netflows

According to a website announcement, Coinbase has expanded its offerings in India, allowing users to directly interact with the platform through the nation’s official fiat currency: the INR.

Indian users can now use the platform’s fiat rails to deposit and withdraw INR without having to go through intermediaries like peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, as is the norm for some other international exchanges with a presence in the country. For facilitating the transactions, the exchange is making use of the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), a popular interbank fund transfer system in India.

Coinbase noted:

Customers have access to spot trading across a range of assets, alongside perpetual futures contracts covering major crypto assets. We have built local INR order books that provide dedicated liquidity for Indian customers, with continued access to our global exchange.

The current Indian push is not the first time that the exchange has taken a crack at the subcontinent. Back in 2022, the platform made its initial entrance into the country, but soon after launch, it was forced to suspend access to Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, leaving users with no way to participate in trading on the platform with the INR. The next year, Coinbase completely discontinued its services in India.

In 2025, however, the platform once again made a return to the market, this time with approval from India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). “For Indian customers, our FIU-IND registration means we operate under the compliance framework established for virtual digital asset service providers in India,” said Coinbase.

The exchange saw a full relaunch in India in December, but it still lacked a fiat on-ramp, something that most retail traders rely on. With this new expansion, it has also finally changed.

Beyond its exchange, Coinbase has also been investing in the country’s digital asset ecosystem in other ways. The firm is an investor in CoinDCX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in India. “Through Base, our Ethereum Layer 2 network, we’ve put over $1 million into the Indian builder community through hackathons, direct grants, and fellowships,” noted the announcement.

Speaking of Coinbase, the Bitcoin spot price on the exchange has been trading lower relative to Binance recently, according to the Coinbase Premium Gap metric from CryptoQuant.

The value of the metric seems to have plummeted into the negative territory | Source: CryptoQuant

From the chart, it’s visible that the gap between the Bitcoin prices on Coinbase and Binance has widened as the cryptocurrency has gone down since mid-May. This could be a potential indication that Coinbase’s users have been applying a higher amount of selling pressure than the latter’s traders.

Bitcoin Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $72,600, down more than 6% over the past week.

Looks like the price of the coin has been consolidating | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com

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