- Binance manages to retain access to fiat currency onramps with Visa and Mastercard not abandoning the cryptocurrency exchange
- Binance may be too big and too decentralized for regulators to effectively curb, with its payments business too lucrative for providers to pass up
What do Visa and Mastercard know about Binance that scores of smaller payment companies and some banks don’t?
Despite rising regulatory scrutiny surrounding the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, Visa (-3.11%) and Mastercard (-5.60%), the world’s two largest credit card payment providers have left their gateways to Binance open.
So while the likes of Barclays (-3.69%) and Santander (-3.41%), two of the United Kingdom’s biggest banks have in recent weeks stopped their customers sending funds to Binance through their payment cards, access through Visa and Mastercard has meant that customers, regardless of where they’re domiciled, can still move fiat currencies to Binance, a testimony to the resilience of the exchange.
Payments partners such as Clear Junction, an important European service provider that had provided Binance access to Sepa, a European payments network which facilitates euro transfers with over 36 countries, has ceased offering services to Binance.
Binance also offers a Visa-branded debit card to its customers that allows them to use funds from their cryptocurrency wallets with the exchange at everyday retailers, and earns fees by converting digital assets into fiat currencies that can be spent.
Issued by Contis, a company that partners with Visa and provides payment services in the European Union through an e-money license from Lithuania’s central bank, the Binance card is available in many European countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Binance’s ethos however may be at odds with regulators, who have criticized the exchange for failing to prevent potential money laundering, terrorism financing and scams which use its platform.
Yet in terms of liquidity and market depth, there are few (if any) cryptocurrency exchanges which can rival Binance.
And while payment services providers dropping off may prove a momentary inconvenience for Binance, as long as Visa and Mastercard continue to provide access to Binance, the global regulatory crackdown on the cryptocurrency exchange will have plenty of bark, but perhaps very little bite.
