Binance Starts Accepting Debit and Credit Cards

While many people now see the use of credit card and debit card payments for procuring online goods and services as outdated, and instead, favour e-wallets such as Paypal, Neteller, and Skrill, Visa and MasterCard are still the most commonly accepted payment methods at many online stores.

Perhaps then, it’s for this reason that one of the largest global cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance, has just announced that its customers can now purchase their preferred cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin via debit and credit card.

The move comes as a direct result of the leading cryptocurrency exchange’s new partnership with Simplex, and is part of the company’s larger mission to increase the mainstream accessibility and adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Binance traders are now able to buy four popular cryptocurrencies via MasterCard and Visa – XRP (Ripple), BTC (Bitcoin), LTC (Litecoin), and ETH (Ethereum).

Up until now, users of the exchange have only been able to use cryptocurrencies to purchase coins, so the introduction of Visa and MasterCard payments should make it easier for new traders to get up and running.

Binance believes that using a credit or debit card on its cryptocurrency exchange offers its customers several benefits, with convenience being one of the main ones. It also charges users low fees or 3.5% per transaction or $10 USD – whichever is higher, and fast processing times that allow the trader’s purchased cryptocurrency to reach their wallet within ten to thirty minutes. However, it’s worth noting that deposits via cryptocurrencies are fee-free, and the exchange’s general trading fee is just 0.1%.

According to a press release issued by the crypto-exchange yesterday, the company’s system is capable of processing over 1.4 million orders every second, making it one of the fastest in the world.

Once users have bought their preferred cryptocurrency (LTC, BTC, ETH, or XRP) via Visa or MasterCard, they can then trade between more than one hundred and fifty 150 coins and tokens.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, explains that by introducing debit and credit cards as a payment method, the exchange’s traders will be able to enjoy “fast and easy access to crypto, in the most secure way possible”. The CEO and co-founder of Simplex, which is the company which handles the payment processing of Visa and MasterCard transaction on the exchange’s behalf, believes that allowing mainstream users the option to make “easy and fast credit card payments” will prove to be “a key factor in wider adoption of cryptocurrency in general”.

Binance was founded in China by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He in 2017 as a platform for trading over one hundred different cryptocurrencies. Since 2018, the company has been considered the largest crypto-exchange in the world in terms of trading volume.

Since August 2018, Binance has been working alongside three other exchanges on a $32m stable coin project called Terra. Terra is a new initiative that’s designed to provide a cryptocurrency which is far less volatile than Bitcoin and other popular digital assets as its value will be pegged to the dollar or another major fiat currency.

By Laura Kilby

Sources:
https://support.binance.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022498052-Binance-Enables-Debit-and-Credit-Card-Payments https://www.binance.com/en/blog/297658163885826048