On January 31, Binance, which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange on the planet announced that users of the platform will now be able to buy digital currencies using debit and credit cards. This will facilitate through a partnership that the exchange has recently inked with Simplex, a fully-licensed financial institution that is known for its fraud-protected payment processing services.
With this new system, the crypto exchange’s users will be able to buy Ethereum, bitcoin, and Litecoin among other currencies using Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards with the process taking an average minimum of 10 minutes and a maximum of 30 minutes. There will also be a transaction fee of $10 or 3.5 percent of the transaction.
According to Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, the move to integrate credit and debit cards onto the platform was mainly motivated by efforts by the company to give the traders faster, easier and more accessible methods of trading digital currencies. The partnership with Simple was therefore well thought-out since it will effectively assist in bridging mainstream payments and crypto for traders all over the world.
The use of credit cards and debit cards in crypto trading is very rare since most exchanges usually refuse them altogether or charge very high transaction processing fees in order to discourage traders from using them. This is quite justifiable due to the risk of chargebacks. These occur when fraudsters gain unauthorized access to a credit or debit card then use it to buy crypto – usually, once the owner of the card regains control of their banking accounts, the credit/debit companies will issue a chargeback and the cost may then be passed on the merchant which, in this case, is the cryptocurrency exchange. Simplex is the perfect partners for Binance since it not only solves the risk problem through what they are calling a “guaranteed fraud-less payment processing” system but also because they are one of the very few companies that will absorb chargeback-related costs.
Is This the Key to Mainstream Adoption?
Binance’s long term goal has been to avail its services available to the wider public and the integration of card payments is certainly going to help with this. As parts of its global expansion plans, the company recently launched two fiat-to-crypto exchanges; Binance.je supports trading in British Pounds and Euros with crypto while Binance Uganda is supporting trading crypto with Ugandan Shillings.
“The crypto industry is still in its early stages and most of the world’s money is still in fiat. Building fiat gateways is what we need now to grow the ecosystem, increase adoption and introduce crypto to more users,” the company’s CEO pointed out.
If crypto is going to go mainstream in the near future, there is no company that is better suited to lead the industry than Binance. The fact that it remains to be the leading crypto exchange will help a lot in pushing this agenda.
