Apple has taken a significant step in its India operations by removing a selection of cryptocurrency apps from its App Store. This move comes in the wake of India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) declaring that nine crypto exchanges were not in compliance with anti-money laundering laws.
Subsequently, the IT Ministry requested the blocking of these websites in India, a request that Apple has seemingly adhered to by withdrawing the associated apps.
Reported by TechCrunch, the removals impact a total of nine services, including major players in the crypto exchange market such as Binance, Kraken, Huobi, Gate.io, Bittrex, Bitfinex, and OKX.
Interestingly, Bitstamp, another service named by the FIU, was still operational on the App Store at the time of TechCrunch’s report.
It is presumed that Apple’s decision to delist these apps from the Indian App Store is in response to directives from the IT Ministry. Notably, the removals are specific to the App Store; the websites of these services remain accessible within India, and their apps are still available for download on the Google Play Store.
As of now, Apple has not issued any official statement regarding the removal of these cryptocurrency apps. Users who had previously downloaded these apps appear to be able to use them without any disruption currently.
This development is part of a broader crypto crackdown in India, which saw the introduction of stringent virtual currency taxes in 2023. These include a 30% tax on crypto gains and a 1% tax on transactions.
Despite this regulatory environment, some exchanges continue to operate legally within India, such as CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX.
