Visa And Mastercard Affirm Support For Binance

Amid an onslaught of FUD, Binance receives some good news from two of its most important partners, Visa and Mastercard.

Main points

• The world’s biggest payment processors affirm their support
• Continued investment in crypto
• Importance of compliance

Visa And Mastercard Affirm Their Support

According to a report, Visa and Mastercard do not plan on blocking their customers from sending money to Binance, despite the crypto exchange’s many regulatory issues.

The affirmation doesn’t extend to bans from banks like Barclays that issue credit cards from Visa or Mastercard. However, Visa and Mastercard will not interfere with banks that continue to support payments to Binance. Both payment processors stated separately that they will monitor Binance’s continued efforts to comply with regulatory bodies around the world.

Binance recently hired a new director of compliance for their European division. Jonathan Farnell joins the team from eToro where he served in the same capacity.

“My role,” Farnell said, “will also focus on ongoing collaborative relationships with regulators and partners, as well as keeping up with the changing requirements in the constantly evolving cryptocurrency ecosystem.”

Mastercard does not have a direct relationship with Binance outside of payment processing. Though, Mastercard partnered with Gemini on a credit card recently. Visa, on the other hand, already has a card with Binance, and announced they do not have any plans on discontinuing the card.

Continued Investment In Crypto

Visa and Mastercard continue their strong support of crypto. It’s quite surprising, considering that crypto is a direct competitor.

Many point to the transaction speeds of crypto not being on par with traditional payment processors. However, new advancements like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Cardano’s Hydra scaling solution promise speeds that rival and exceed that of the entrenched payment processors.

Nevertheless, Visa and Mastercard announce new partnerships seemingly every week like using USDC to bridge with Ethereum, partnering with BlockFi, and working with PayPal. Not to mention, last week Visa announced crypto related card usage topped 1 billion in the first half of 2021.

So far, Visa and Mastercard’s support for crypto has proven very lucrative.

Importance Of Compliance

Famously, last December Visa and Mastercard discontinued support for a certain adult website. 

The ban came after a successful public pressure campaign. As mentioned above, both payment processors continue to monitor the situation, but Binance appears to be moving ahead with compliance related efforts.

Although, the adult streaming industry adapted to the measures — and provided a use case for crypto — the same can’t be said for Binance, which needs inflows of Fiat to stay competitive with their compliant peers like Coinbase and Gemini.