Binance stops deposits and withdrawals of GBP

Just a month after halting bank transfers in US dollars, Binance is now being forced to stop processing British pound deposits and withdrawals as well.

Only 1% of users are affected

Crypto companies are constantly struggling with their banking partners.

Global leading crypto exchange Binance will be suspend British pound deposits and withdrawals in the coming week. The changes have already come into effect for new users, while existing users have until 22 May before they see the service closed.

“Paysafe, our fiat partner that provides GBP deposit and withdrawal services via bank transfers and via card to Binance users, has informed us that they will no longer be able to provide these services as of May 22, 2023,” a Binance spokesperson said to CoinDesk.

Last month, Binance announced that it would suspend deposits and withdrawals of US dollars through wire transfers. The exchange indicated at the time that the suspension would only affect 0.01% of monthly active users. This time it stated that the GBP change would affect less than 1% of users. The company assured that it was working to restart both services as soon as possible.

Binance’s suspension of GBP and USD transfers is likely due to banking issues. According to leading Bitcoin advocate Nic Carter, the US government may try to do so crack down on the crypto industry by cutting it off from the banking sector—a strategy Carter called Operation Choke Point 2.0. Carter claims that the scheme involves putting pressure on banking institutions to avoid offering their services to crypto companies on “safety and soundness”.

Despite these headwinds, Binance redone $504 billion in spot trading volume in February – more than 61% of the entire market share.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other crypto assets.