After Mastercard ended its partnership with Binance in Latin America and Bahrain in September, possibly due to regulatory concerns, Binance is now set to phase out its Visa debit card in Europe.
Binance’s Visa debit card services will come to a halt in the European Economic Area (EEA) on December 20, as announced by the crypto exchange on October 20. This change will not impact Binance accounts.
According to a letter from Binance to its customers that surfaced online, the card issuer for Binance, Finansinės paslaugos “Contis” or Contis Financial Services, will cease issuing the card. Contis is a Lithuanian electronic money institution and foreign exchange operator owned by the German banking-as-a-service platform, Solaris Group, operating across 30 European nations.
Binance’s Visa debit card facilitates the conversion of cryptocurrencies in Binance user accounts to local currencies, enabling them to use cryptocurrencies for both in-store and online purchases. The EEA, consisting of 27 member states, saw the introduction of Binance’s Visa debit card in September 2020. At that time, there were plans to roll out Binance cards in Russia and potentially in the United States as well. A Binance spokesperson shared with Cointelegraph:
“While Binance users worldwide have enjoyed using [the Binance Visa debit card] for everyday payments with crypto assets, only about 1% of our users are affected by this change.”
The discontinuation of Binance’s Visa card service is the latest in a string of challenges faced by the exchange. The news about the end of Binance’s Visa card services came a day after the exchange reinstated euro deposits and withdrawals, which had been unavailable for a month after payment processor Paysafe stopped serving the exchange. Binance is still not onboarding new users in the UK due to the loss of a third-party service provider.
Binance.US had paused U.S. dollar deposits in June and had indicated that withdrawals would also be halted. They partnered with MoonPay to allow U.S. users to purchase Tether USDT on the exchange. Earlier this week, it was announced that U.S. customers could withdraw dollars from their accounts by converting fiat into a stablecoin.