Binance terminates wallet services to India’s WazirX

• Binance says WazirX has till 3 February 2023 at 23:59 UTC to withdraw assets from its accounts.
• According to Binance, Zanmai Labs, the company behind WazirX, has failed to retract misleading public statements about their relationship.
• Changpeng Zhao said in August 2022 that Binance never acquired WazirX and that it only offered wallet services to the exchange.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has terminated wallet services it has been offering to Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX.

An announcement Binance published on Friday, 3 February 2023, notes that the decision to halt the wallet service relates to Zanmai Labs, the company that operates WazirX. As explained in the blog post, Zanmai has severally put forth misleading claims about its relationship with Binance.

In particular, claims that Binance had control over WazirX user funds and exchange operations is a misleading narrative that Zanmai has continued to perpetuate.

Binance halts wallet services to WazirX operator

Due to all the false claims, Binance says it gave Zanmai the opportunity to retract the misrepresentations if they wanted to still benefit from the wallet services. That hasn’t happened and it’s the reason for the move.

According to Binance, the relationship between it and Zanmai has only been around the provision of wallet services. These, the exchange added, are offered “as a tech solution” to help power WazirX’s exchange operations and that this isn’t unique to Zanmai. 

The wallet service is similarly offered to other companies that leverage the technology and infrastructure to run their own businesses.

“On 26 January 2023, we offered Zanmai a choice between retracting the false public statements (and continuing to use our services) or terminating the use of our wallet service. Since Zanmai has refused to clarify their misleading statements, Zanmai has till 3 February 2023 (23:59 UTC) to remove the funds from the accounts that they used for WazirX’s operations,” Binance wrote.

Reportedly, Zanmai is ready to withdraw all WazirX assets from Binance accounts. Binance is also offering to allow the withdrawals to extend beyond 3 February. The process will not impact Binance users, the exchange noted.

In August last year, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao explained that although his company had announced its acquisition of WazirX in 2019, the deal never materialized. Zhao’s comments came as the Indian government froze WazirX accounts amid investigations into a money laundering scheme.