Binance suspends payment services for UK customers

BLOOMBERG

Binance Holdings Ltd, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is suspending deposit and withdrawal services via bank transfers and card payments for UK customers after its local banking partner stopped providing support for transactions in British pounds.
Paysafe, a London-based online payments company, said it would stop providing one of its products to Binance’s customers in the UK, citing local regulators’ approach to cryptoassets. Paysafe didn’t say whether it would drop support for other crypto companies as well.
“We have concluded that the UK regulatory environment in relation to crypto is too challenging to offer this service at this time and so this is a prudent decision on our part taken in an abundance of caution,” Paysafe said in a statement.
Binance halted deposits and withdrawals in pounds for new users, and will suspend such transactions for all customers on May 22, a spokesperson said in an email. “Our team is working hard to find an alternative solution” for users affected by the changes, the spokesperson added.
The suspension reflects rapidly worsening conditions for the crypto sector in the UK, after banks including HSBC Holdings Plc and Natwest Group Plc put restrictions on how much money their clients can move to digital-asset exchanges. While UK politicians have sought to embrace crypto in the past year, the financial regulator has repeatedly warned that investors in the asset class risk losing all their money.
Paysafe said the UK portion of its overall business with Binance is “small,” and that it would keep working with the exchange in other parts of Europe and in Latin America.
Binance itself has struggled to establish a base in the UK. It acquired a local firm in 2020 to act as its UK subsidiary under the name Binance Markets Ltd, but the Financial Conduct Authority issued a warning against the outfit a year later for not having the relevant permissions to operate in the country.