CHENNAI: Technology industry lobby groups and founders of startups have asked India’s banking regulator to include cryptocurrency and crypto assets in its proposed regulatory sandbox framework for the fintech industry.The Reserve Bank of India’s ‘Draft Enabling Framework for Regulatory Sandbox’, put out on April 18, had excluded cryptocurrency, initial coin offerings, credit registry and other related sectors. Payments Council of India (PCI), the payments industry lobby group, has also sought a more open structure.Since there is no outright ban on cryptocurrency technology, it should form part of the sandbox, said Naveen Surya, chairman emeritus of PCI. “The boundaries can’t be defined right away. The discussion has been on how an open framework can be created instead of a subset of existing laws, because then we wouldn’t be achieving the innovation objective,” he said.“Ideally, they shouldn’t have such large exclusions.”Founders who have been part of regulatory sandboxes in other countries, too, have weighed in on the debate.“With Bahrain, the approach is that startups enter the sandbox and if their developments pan out, they are given licences to start operating,” said Ramani Ramachandran, CEO of ZPX, a Singapore-based startup that builds blockchain assets and which is part of the regulatory sandbox of Bahrain’s central bank. The exclusion is aimed at just one application of blockchain (cryptocurrency); clearly the regulator sees fiat money being the way forward for India.”

Source: Economic Times May 16, 2019 03:11 UTC