Previously, Binance users purchasing cryptocurrencies were only able to so by depositing funds. This is changing.
Through a partnership with payment processor Simplex, users can purchase Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ripple (XRP) using Visa or Mastercard.
According to Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao, he said that the company "want[s] to provide Binance traders with fast and easy access to crypto, in the most secure way possible."
Zhao added that the users can purchase digital assets with credit cards and "start trading in minutes."
To do so, users can go to https://www.binance.com/en/creditcard, sign in with their credentials, choose the coin they want, enter the amount, and enter their card's details.
After that, they are good to go, ready to trade those with the 150 coins and tokens supported by Binance.
In the past, buying cryptocurrencies with a credit card was a difficult business.
Coinbase for example, has disabled this option for its U.S. users since February 2018. The decision was made after some credit card companies said that they would prohibit the use of their cards for this purpose.
With the plummeting prices of those digital coins, things weren't looking good either.
But Binance wants to change that, as it makes buying cryptocurrencies a lot easier.
“Partnering with Simplex allows us to instantly bridge the gap between credit card payments and crypto for traders globally," said Zhao. 'Tthe crypto industry is still in its early stages and most of the world’s money is still in fiat," which, according to him, is the reason why fiat gateways are important for the growth of the ecosystem.
Nimrod Lehavi, co-founder and CEO of Simplex, said that for mainstream users, the ease for purchasing cryptocurrencies is "a key factor in wider adoption of crypto in general."
Although the platform was only launched in 2017, Binance quickly rose up the exchange rankings with its vast offering of alt coins. As the largest cryptocurrency exchange by adjusted trade volumes, the company processes about $650 million in trades every day.
During the heights of the late cryptocurrency craze in 2017, the platform was comfortably experiencing daily trading volumes that surpassed the $1 billion mark.
While convenient and highly anticipated, users in directly purchasing cryptocurrencies with a credit or debit card on Binance isn't the cheapest way to do it. Its price is a bit higher, excluding the additional 3.5 percent fee (or $10, whichever's higher) per transaction.
Whilst this is slightly cheaper than the fees charged by Coinbase, Binance users are required to wait between 10-30 minutes before they can receive their coins.
What's more, Binance is a strict crypto-to-crypto exchange that doesn't offer trading pairs for fiat currencies. And also, users can't even send fiat to the exchange
This essentially makes the credit and debit card cryptocurrency purchases the only direct fiat gateway for the largest cryptocurrency exchange out there.
Binance in supporting debit and credit cards comes months after the company launched two fiat-to-crypto exchanges to allow users to trade Euros, British Pounds, and Ugandan Shillings with cryptocurrencies, and a week after the company launched its own over-the-counter (Binance OTC) trading desks for larger transactions worth at least 20 BTC.