India is an emerging Bitcoin market. The country has seen a drastic increase in demand for the cryptocurrency since late-2016. As the Bitcoin community grows in the country, leading platforms are still in the process of making the whole exchange and trading process easier for them. Unocoin, one of the “Big Four” Indian Bitcoin platforms has announced a new development which will make buying Bitcoin a much more convenient process. The company has partnered with an international payment processor, PayU Biz to streamline the process of buying Bitcoin through Internet Banking.
Most of the Indian platforms allow customers to fund their accounts on the platform through wire transfers. The whole process of funding one’s account to purchase Bitcoin through this process sometimes takes a good 24 hours. The absence of other convenient payment methods is mainly due to the unwillingness of mainstream payment processors to provide their services to cryptocurrency businesses. However, the recent deal between Unocoin and PayU Biz, a South African payment solutions provider with a strong presence in India shows that Bitcoin is slowly gaining acceptance among businesses in the country.
A leading Indian daily has quoted Unocoin’s co-founder, Sathvik Vishwanath, saying,
“With an increasing interest in Bitcoin, this integration will enable Unocoin customer to buy Bitcoin even on a weekend while the manual payment processing is not functional.”
The media reports, as well as company’s statement, indicate that Unocoin is not making use of PayU Biz’ complete payment solution as the platform also supports credit/debit card and mobile wallet payments. It is unclear whether PayU Biz has decided against offering its full suite or Unocoin has deliberately stepped away from accepting card payments from its customers.
Other Indian players are also working on introducing new features on their platforms, and multiple online payment options continue to be on top of everyone’s list. Unocoin’s integration of PayU Biz payment solution could see other platforms follow suit, either with the same payment solution provider or different ones. Based on the performance, there is a possibility of expansion in the payment options offered by the payments company to Unocoin and other crypto-businesses in the near future.
Ref: Economic Times | Image: Unocoin
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