Topic: Indian banks freezing bank accounts AGAIN ! - page 2. (Read 589 times)

I would still believe Paytm Indian Bank has a valid reason for freezing those user's accounts.
 It must be a suspicious activity even they had submitted cryptocurrency trading as their source of funds, banks has a way if it is true or not.
 
 On the other hand, giving the fact that some clients are having a legit income from cryptocurrency trading, Indian banks are just complying and afraid not to follow RBI's order;
 
 
 This explains why Indian banks freezes their accounts even crypto is legal in their country.

Any government can authorize any of her institutional arms to act according to the laws of the land, India government had since be against suspicious financial movement and this won't change in time to come. Ensuring the citizens are protected and the government can be trace to this move by India Banks.
 
Here in Nigeria, you're put on check when it come to financial transactions according to MLM act. This is normal to any government to flag any suspension transactions, so, those without any won't be flag. I was flagged by First Bank PLC but careful explanation gave me scale through and funds were released.

I have read the news that PayTm is freezing the accounts of users that are dealing in cryptocurrencies even though there is a supreme court order but as avikz mentioned they are playing around the lack of rules and regulations and the bank has the authority to determine what they allow and what they ban and i believe there is some involvement from the government for them to ban the users dealing in cryptocurrency.

@akram143 as you mentioned there is another possibility that PayTm was used by hackers in the past to steal others account and purchase BTCitcoin and may be that is the reason behind this decision to ban anyone dealing with cryptocurrency.

Paytm accounts are often hacked and used to buy bitcoins on websites like Localbitcoin and that is the reason of the received account gets frozen when the real owner of the send account report it to the bank, which doesn't mean all the trading activity accounts will be blocked by the banks when the country allows them to do.And this problems exists everywhere that is why stop trading with random newbie unverified accounts who are the one involved in such kind of activities.

i thought its already possible with the debit cards created by the crypto companies today like Binance and crypto.com so the reason why they were hyped.

seem a confusing time when governments are allowing crypto currency yet banks can somehow just block any transactions and freeze accounts. don;t it look like its the bank that run the government?

Individual banks have been closing accounts of their customers who deal with crypto all over the world and for a long time. Some banks see it as a risk that isn't worth taking. I think this just highlights how low the adoption of crypto is currently is, crypto was supposed to disrupt banks, but it's practically impossible to live without a bank account these days, especially if you try to go 100% on crypto. So, until it changes, you should be careful with your bank, research if it tolerates crypto or not, maybe get a separate account for withdrawing crypto.

If cryptocurrency (a currency) trading is not illegal, why then would the banks freeze the accounts? Is it not possible or easy to report the banks that are violating that part of the law/rules that say "trading crypto is not illegal"?
A company's interest cannot be above the Just "Law of the Land" it operates.
By the way, I wonder where on earth it's illegal to trade or exchange one currency for another.

You have raised so many valid questions and I think these are bases for banning or seizure and freezing of accounts. If users don't comply to rules of doing business and taking to illegal dealings, banning might be inevitable.

I don't think this is at all surprising. India can not yet decide how to treat crypto. They either accept crypto or ban it.

This is certainly very frustrating.  Here in the United States we've had issues with all sorts of institutions having issue with cryptocurrency.  At one point you could use your credit card to purchase crypto, then you couldn't now I think you can.  PayPal has had issues etc.  Hopefully things start to change.

Maybe the banks were experiencing downfall in the annual revenue. India is one among the country that has got huge increase in the users over the past few months time. If I'm not wrong the cryptocurrency markets growth is the main reason for the ongoing freezing of accounts. Localbitcoins is the platform thats been used much for the trading purpose. Right now almost every trader is perfectly registered with the bank for taxation. So there is no need of blocking accounts of the customers.

Indian Government have no such restrictions against cryptocurrencies but these Indian banks always have a grudge against bitcoin.
Even though the Government has not passed any law to freeze the bank accounts of crypto holders, the bank freeze their accounts.
Personally I have been trading crypto for years now but I have not encountered any such incident so far.
So I think the banks only freezes the accounts of suspicious users and not all crypto holders.

I think that’s correct.

Bank need people more than they need bank. I mean people can always take money and buy gold, silver, and bitcoin in our case. They can always find a way to store money.

Honestly, bank runs through the money that they collect from people. They charge interest against loans (many kinds), and that’s how they get income.

They can’t just go on blocking the accounts.

It depends on case to case and how their bank transfer histories are. If they did something suspicious, money laundering, illegal money etc. Banks do have right to freeze such accounts and frozen account owners are not considered as victims if proofs show they broke banks' ToS and the local laws as well.

I don't think bank would just freeze account of their customers on their own without a directive from the government or regulatory bodies. I don't know how it works there but banks always tries to keep their customer with them. They won't be troubling people for just using the banks to buy legal things. One situation maybe the number of fraud calls originating on transactions, but I don't think that would be large among legit crypto traders. Often non crypto networking schemes are also sold as crypto to naive investors around the world.

I believe they have taken this decision considering the current financial situation of country. Just look around India and status of finances, it’s breaking apart.

Now you can direct this concerns with the people who are holding big bags of Indian currencies in the form of bitcoin. We can’t deny this includes, entrepreneurs, politicians, Bollywood personalities and more.

I think this fact can’t be denied in first place and government knows how they are hiding their TAXES,,!

These are few of the points we shall consider in discussion.

Well, this is just an assumption but I think it’s close one. And of course bad for rest of us who are trying passive income ways through this.

If banks in India are so tough against the use of cryptocurrency by citizens, it is necessary not to use their services where it is related to cryptocurrency. After all, you can use cryptocurrency without being tied to bank accounts and bank cards. It must be remembered that banks clearly work according to the instructions that are given to them from above. Therefore, one should expect the emergence of regulations of the government and legislators of this country regarding the regulation of cryptocurrency. Only after that the banks will work in the legal field.
In the meantime, there is still a legal vacuum in India regarding cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is not allowed there, but it is not prohibited either. Everyone must decide on the laws to regulate cryptocurrency.

If banks are freezing accounts which is against the court order then it is possible to take legal actions against them right? People trade through p2p are most likely won't get caught for this because it is going to be a random person to person transaction so if the banks are acting in this way then better find a way to confuse them.

So why are you directing your hate towards the government when banks are acting like this on their own?
You just mentioned that you have used a bank to transfer (probably) funds in and out of an exchange for 4 years, and the bank has not taken any action, so it comes down to the banks you're using.

Besides, you're making a wrong assumption, banks are not intervening in the crypto transfer as they obviously can't, they are flagging down accounts involved in what they call suspicious activity with fiat transfers, nothing will change if cryptocurrencies will be legal, banks will always have the power and unfortunately also the legal right to close down or limit your account if they think something wrong is going there. Things like this are not limited to India, we have such cases even in Europe, I have a few friends who got questions about the source of funds they were receiving, the funny part is that they were dealing with less money than me and I haven't got one notice.
For most of the banks, it's simply that they want to avoid any further hassle or inquiry, they are happier with people getting their daily wage in the account which is tracked amount than people who might bring an investigation and what that investigation might uncover totally unrelated to the case.

Simply close your account and move to the other one, if all those 5 million you said are crypto users in India would do the same banks will take notice.
Or better, stop using banks altogether, I thought that was the point of crypto, right?

I don't know what's happening lately in India, there are some movements where applications and platforms like Mobile Legends (MLBB) and TikTok has been banned operating to their country, there are more apps that will be permanently banned in India about 50 more. And now they are banning crypto again, anything that revolves with crypto including the financial institution that deals with crypto which I think is not a good decision considered by their government. I think they also see, and focused on it's bad side coz it might be used in illegal activities and didn't look at the business opportunities that it can provide. This is so sad