Bitcoin Forum

I've used Localbitcoins mostly in the past and it sufficed for the most part. I don't trade INR-BTC too often. Hence I had not tried Zebpay or any other bigger Indian bitcoin portals earlier.

I started with Zebpay by putting some INR in the wallet. Apparently they accept only NEFT, RTGS and IMPS. Sure, understood. This is their order confirmation page which tells you where you should send your money to:
https://i.imgur.com/1pglcSc.png

Not a single mention of any fees they will charge if the payment is not acceptable to them.

Now, they send an email almost half an hour later (probably by when most people would have sent their payments) saying "Do not send funds from non verified bank accounts or from wallets like PayTM, Mobikwik.
These payments will not be accepted and the order will be canceled. We shall refund such payments to your bank account after 7 working days and with a refund charge of Rs 250."

1) Paytm uses IMPS for transferring funds.

How is the end user supposed to know that you have problems with WHERE that IMPS is coming from? Isn't it your ethical responsibility to let users know AT the time of placing the order that any such fees apply?

2) Paytm is not an "non unverified" source. Zebpay has my authenticated mobile number and I don't see a problem if I use that very number for making INR payments to them.

It's not about Rs. 250 that was lost. Right off the bat, the website has already lost my trust as to what all hidden fees they will have in the future. That is not how you run successful startups.

This seems more of a systematic way of milking money out of people.

EDIT: I should clarify: I am not against them charging people "refund fees". It's their policy and they can decide on those things. But TELL people IN ADVANCE that you're going to charge them for something, not AFTER.

It is rather unfortunate incident. Some how before purchase of bit from zebpay or for that matter other available option, i knew that paytm and other mobile wallets are not acceptable. Your point is right if there is no mention of 'mobile-wallet not accepted' policy.

I am not a member of Zebpay so i am not sure what their terms and conditions are and if they are not clearing stating that they wont accept non banking transactions they have to specify that clearly and they cannot take money to refund the amount .You can file a complaint to consumer protection if that is the case.

I thought I should update here. They did not charge me the fee like they had mentioned in the automated email, and Zebpay support clarified to me that they have the system in place to curb abuse.

Anyway, if they do charge this fee to anyone else, they should have it mentioned clearly at the time of giving bank details inside the app.

It's a misunderstanding from your end here as Zebpay has clearly mentioned that they accept deposits from bank accounts only and the payment mode can be NEFT/RTGS/IMPS. They also mentioned to add the reference number from YOUR bank account statement which means it should be only YOUR BANK that sends the payment which means that it should not be any third-party sending the payment.

I feel the fee is too high that they charged you for the mistake but they should have mentioned it first. Sorry for your loss but next time be careful while reading their terms.

This is the main reason of not using zebpay or coinsecure as they are not legit exchanges and they bend their rules as and when they like and they also dont give full details on clear,

They are very much legit site. Why do you say so that they are not? Also as far as known they do not make any changes on random basis yet and charge as per what they like. They have a standard rates and functionalities on which its based on.

Yes they are legit but zebpay charge high fee for their services.
I placed sell order for 0.29 btc and they charged 40 rs just for placing order.
I understand fees are necessary for running their services but charging fee even before actual sell is not fair.

This are the hidden charges they charge which most of the seller or buyer dont check and they dont know that they are trading with high fees, No other exchange have this rule of charging fees even before the trade is done and just to place the order you are charging it then if the trade gets success then you are charging more also.

They charge so called hidden fees as they allow seller to sell at high price then current price.even if you do transaction in yobit they also have high btc exchange rate than current.

Hi
This is Mahin here from Zebpay. Please accept our sincere apologies if there was any inconvenience to you.

Zebpay DOES NOT CHARGE ANY FEES for placing order. Please PM me your registered mobile number and order id and I will look into it immediately.

Also on almost all cases, Zebpay does not charge fees for refunding payments. If a user is found repeatedly using third party account to transfer funds, then we charge it. Also sometimes few users try to abuse system. As a responsible exchange we can not allow our accounts to be misused. Also such transfers and refunds are time consuming in terms of compliance and processing and eventually they slow down overall support and order processing. To discourage such behaviors we have this provision.

Please feel free to get back to me in case you have any questions or concerns.

Regards
Mahin
Zebpay

Hi tu-co

Thanks for update. I am not sure why you have not received email immediately. May be some issue at tech side. I hope yur issue was resolved. I will really appreciate if you can update OP with this update.

Regards
Mahin
Zebpay

I have not used Zebpay personaly. But if ur concerns are legit, then u shud file
complaint at ur local consumer court against unethical trade practices. PM me if u need a good lawyer dealing in cyber laws.

How do u find whether an user is doing NEFT from his/her verified bank account or some other bank account? NEFT details does NOT include sending bank account details. U get only the reference no.

If it comes to our notice, we will not accept that payment. Most of the banks provide topup product, special accounts where you can receive more details about transaction.

Regards
Mahin

Great... but how do u make sure that the verified bank account is really verified? I mean to say, how do u ensure that the owner of the bank account is the same person indicated in the ID proofs provided?

As already explained, on special bank accounts  ( and in some banks, you have to buy it as top up product ) you get lot more details about transaction which includes sender details.

But again this is on best effort basis. If we find you are using third party accounts to transfer, we will not accept that payment.

I hope I was able to answer your concerns.

Regards
Mahin

If there is a rule like that are you sure you have mentioned that in your website.It is really unacceptable to charge hidden fees and ask them to read the terms of service agreement .I would like to know what is the real reason for banning third party account transfers.

To safeguard Zeb IT Solutions Private Limited against AML.

Zebpay rates are also unreasonably high.There buy and sell price difference is also high.This is unfair. Sometimes it is more than 2k inr

Totally agree, even Unocoin rates are similar to zebpay most of the time.

I appreciate your concern. But please note that we are not exchanges. We hold stocks of bitcoins and we take a huge risk of price volatility. The stocks ensure that when you want to buy or sell bitcoins, you don't have to wait for sellers or buyers as on exchanges.

The spread reduces when bitcoin price is stable and goes up when bitcoins prices are volatile. - Sandeep, co-founder.

But you should consider the fees, they are somehow high and its unusual. Just my 1 satoshi.

What risk? All your stocked bitcoin are from your users.You just facilitate storage and trade.
You charge high fees for just placing a trade order.Fee should be deducted when order is successfully completed.

Well I think you are unaware that say there are 50 users selling total 100 btc at one point. Now there are only 20 buyers who require 20 btc. So zebpay will buy 100 btc which all users have sold it and they will sell 20 btc which users want to buy. Risk is of 80 btc which they have bought it. But yes as price plums as well so they even rise too. SO ideally it will depend how much they hold at the time of increase/decrease.

Hi sandeep i accept the fact that you are taking a huge risk in holding bitcoin but then i would assume that you have collected the stock when the price was lower and have already made a good profit out of it. The only problem the OP is pointing out is that you have to notify the customers about the hidden fees you will be collecting if you are sending  the money through non verified bank accounts or from wallets like PayTM, Mobikwik .I really do think it is a simple request and can be highlighted in the TOS about fees and cancellation.

localbitcoin is the best .

We all take this risk.There's no business without risk.Bitcoin has given huge returns in past few months.
Everyone has right to make profit but unfair fees and selling at higher price than market rate is called unfair trade practices.

As per my knowledge, i am using zebpay from about 1 year and have made many deposits and transaction without any technical obstacles and delays. Zebpay has numerous users across india , very good and satisfied customer support. i thank zebpay.

Well I understand what you are saying but well they are also in business and to earn profits. Also there is no unfair trade practices being done they show you the price and if you interested you buy or sell it to them or else you can buy/sell to someone else.

Got email from zebpay and now they have increased the minimum amount to deposit from 1000 to 5000 INR.
Although one can buy btc for 1000 INR also but if he still have to deposit minimum 5k INR.Ridiculous.
Zebpay will kill itself.

Yes that's is right that if you can buy for 1000 then why should I deposit 5000? Also I am not sure what is the withdraw limit? Then people will withdraw those 4000 and it will be more work for those guys only as they have to process 4000 unnecessarily . Well but the reason is that  "We've updated the limit to better serve our users and increase response time" .

In a way this will help them to be more focus on higher transaction deals rather than small ones.

Good point.I think the minimum withdrawal limit is still 500 INR so those who want to buy btc for less than 5k INR,will deposit 5k and after buying btc of their desired amount,they will withdraw the remaining amount.But Zebpay will get fee again for withdrawing thier money.
That will make difficult for a common man to buy bts because now they need 5k INR even for buying 1k worth of btc

Well not sure if its wrong in anyway. Now they are growing and probably they have so much of work load and volumes in a big way that they would like to move out of small business which is not much yielding them . Say somebody buys 1000 Rs and some buy 100000. So they would like to serve 100000 person first and they have huge clients base who purchases and sell in bulk. In coming time they may still increase minimum buy/sell to 5000 as well.

Hi zahra4577
Thanks  for sharing your concerns. Yes I agree its tough move, but there is a reason behind it. At the moment we have got huge number of new users in last couple of months. While we were able to scale tech and trading without much issues, we struggled to scale our deposit processing and customer support. Deposit processing is manual process for us as of now so increasing deposit amount will reduce number of transactions to process a bit and may be will help us to improve per deposit response time. Buy and sell is automated process so we can still allow 1000 Rs there. Also just fyi, there is no minimum amount in withdrawal.
All I can say is we are agile and working very hard to improve our processes. We may not be perfect at the moment but we are learning, scaling and improving day by day. Feedback from users is always welcome and we really appreciate it.

Regards
Mahin
Zebpay

Zebpay's "hidden" transaction charges are really high. They don't charge anything on the transaction but they have a difference of at least 3-5% between buying and selling price. So you already lose out 5% of your wealth as soon as you buy from Zebpay.
Koinex.in and https://www.coinome.com/ has a transaction fees of only 0.25% in comparison.

Why is zebpay's price of Bitcoin  much higher than in international markets? Are you guys trying to be millionaires in such a short time?

Seriously Outrageous fees .. I tried to deposit over 70k via Payment Gateway option and guess what fee is above 1000 INR lol . Considering the fact its almost instant deposit but fees way to much seriously . I hope Zebpay consider lowering it and strangely i notice that ICICI , HDFC , AXIS netbanking facility removed from Payment Gateway option why is that so ?

Instead of market identifying the bitcoin rate, zebpay is determining the price in India. From time to time although bitcoin price drops, They keep the zebpay buying price as constant. Those idiots are determining the buying and selling price on their own.

When you first open the app,it is already written then buy and sell price is higher,and it is not just buy price ,sell price is also high.now as they moved to peer to peer it has somewhat close to international rates but still it is high.

Zebpay still running their business in India? What about rest announcement of RBI recording crypto? Still people able to deposit and withdraw on zebpay? If anyone did deposit/withdraw after the RBI announcment please let me know