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Coinbase’s Cautious India Comeback
Coinbase is now allowing Indian customers to sign up and execute crypto-to-crypto trades, according to the company’s director for Asia-Pacific, John O’Loghlen.
Speaking at last week’s India Blockchain Week, O’Loghlen revealed that Coinbase plans to introduce a fiat on-ramp in 2026. This feature would allow users to load rupees into the app and buy digital assets directly, a functionality Coinbase ditched weeks after rolling out in 2022, when the operator of India’s Unified Payments Interface distanced itself from the exchange.
Coinbase later halted all operations in India, offboarding millions of users in 2023 as it transitioned to what O’Loghlen termed as a “clean slate” approach with local regulators.
“We had millions of customers in India, historically, and we took a very clear stance to off-board those customers entirely from overseas entities, where they were domiciled and regulated. Because we wanted to kind of burn the boats, have a clean slate here,” O’Loghlen quipped.
 
Since then, the firm has been working to rebuild its footing in India, kicking off engagement with local regulators in a bid to comply with anti-money laundering oversight. Coinbase completed registration with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit earlier this year. That registration laid the foundation for Coinbase’s return to one of the world’s largest digital-asset markets.
Coinbase announced in October that it was investing in local crypto exchange CoinDCX at a $2.45 billion valuation as part of its broader expansion strategy across India and the Middle East. During the same month, the exchange also quietly reopened its app to Indian customers via an early-access program before opening it more broadly this month.
Coinbase’s relaunch in the Indian market comes as crypto companies continue to deal with the country’s harsh tax framework, which includes a 30% flat levy on crypto gains and a 1% transaction tax that stifles trading volumes.