ZebPay Referral Code

ZebPay's referral is ₹100. Its history is worth considerably more than that, because it is the clearest available illustration of the risk that actually matters when you choose an Indian crypto exchange.

ZebPay is among the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in India, and its referral has been advertised at ₹100. The ₹100 is not why this page is worth reading.

In 2018 the Reserve Bank of India restricted regulated banks from providing services to businesses dealing in virtual currencies. That did not ban crypto. It did something more effective: it cut the rails. Without banking access an exchange cannot take rupee deposits or process rupee withdrawals, and a crypto exchange that cannot move rupees is not a business. ZebPay shut its Indian exchange operation that year and moved offshore. In March 2020 the Supreme Court of India set the RBI's restriction aside, banking access returned, and so did ZebPay.

That sequence is the single most useful thing to understand about holding assets on any Indian crypto exchange, and it generalises well beyond this one platform.

The risk that closes an exchange is usually not a hack and usually not a ban. It is the removal of the payment rails between the exchange and the banking system. It can happen without any law being passed, it affects every user simultaneously, and the assets themselves are not the problem — the ability to convert them into money is. Anyone choosing where to hold crypto in India should be asking what happens to withdrawals if banking access is interrupted, rather than only asking about security.

The current regulatory picture is more settled than 2018 but not simple. Exchanges have been reporting entities under the PMLA since 2023 and must register with FIU-IND, run KYC, monitor transactions and file suspicious transaction reports. FIU-IND registration is therefore a meaningful filter — it does not guarantee solvency or competence, but an unregistered platform is subject to none of those obligations.

The tax position is where most of the actual cost sits, and it applies identically across every exchange in this batch. Gains on Virtual Digital Assets are taxed at a flat 30%, plus surcharge and 4% cess, regardless of holding period. 1% TDS applies under Section 194S, per transfer. Only acquisition cost is deductible. And crypto losses cannot be offset — not against other crypto gains, not against other income, and not carried forward. From FY2025-26 Schedule VDA is mandatory in ITR-2 and ITR-3, with foreign-platform holdings additionally disclosable in Schedule FA, which has no minimum value exemption.

Against all of that, a ₹100 referral bonus is a rounding error, and treating it as the deciding factor between exchanges would be a mistake. The deciding factors are FIU-IND registration, what happens to your withdrawals under stress, and whether you understand the tax treatment of what you are about to buy.