Bitget, an Alchemy Pay partner that enables crypto purchases via Indian Rupee and UPI

Bitget, which is a Seychelles-based crypto exchange, has decided to allow Indian users to buy cryptocurrencies using fiat rupees. The exchange has partnered with payment solutions platform Web3 Alchemy Pay to facilitate crypto purchases through the rupee currency. The goal of this collaboration is to make buying crypto on international exchanges more accessible in India, while diversifying the number of platforms to do so for citizens.

According to message published on Bitget’s site, its collaboration with Alchemy Pay will open up crypto purchases via IMPS bank transfers as well as through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Alchemy Pay, as part of this partnership, will provide its on-ramp services to Bitget’s trading platform. This service allows users to use fiat services such as Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay to purchase crypto assets. As part of its services, Alchemy also allows crypto holders to sell their crypto holdings and transfer the funds back to their back accounts in the form of fiat currencies.

This leads to an interesting development, as the last time an exchange offered to allow Indians to buy crypto assets through UPI, it did not go down well with the Indian authorities.

In April 2022, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced this feature for Indian users visiting the exchange. However, NPCI’s reaction to the development has dampened the spirits of the company. At the time, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said it had not authorized Coinbase to use the UPI system to authorize crypto purchases. The exchange had to withdraw its announcement and disable the UPI-based asset purchase feature.

As of now, NPCI has not responded to Bitget’s feature enabling crypto purchases for Indians through UPI.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time that Bitget has shown interest in India. In November 2023, Bitget decided to infuse $10 million (roughly Rs. 83 crore) over a period of five years in India, with the aim of encouraging businesses operating in the crypto space. In April last year, Bitget initiated a $100 million (roughly Rs. 819 crore) self-funded pool to help promising Web3 projects emerging from Asia.

According to a 2023 report by Chainalysis, India topped the index out of 154 countries, showing the most promise for crypto adoption. Nigeria, Vietnam, USA and Ukraine followed India in the index to secure second, third and fourth ranking respectively.