Photo: Coinspeaker
Recently, Binance has announced that they will add two more fiat-to-crypto gateways, hence WeChat and Alipay. With this move, citizens of China now will be able to purchase Bitcoin, with these two payment options. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, confirmed this news on his Twitter account:
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 9, 2019
Currently, this initiative is only in the testing phase for Android users, but will eventually come out on iOS as well.
By doing this, Binance is entering the P2P (peer-to-peer) trading space in China and becomes one of the few options for people in China to purchase the three most popular cryptocurrencies.
“Technically, Binance as a P2P platform itself is NOT integrated with WeChat/Alipay payment, but the vendors or users on the platform accept WeChat/Alipay transaction for crypto trading. Binance only provides the onramp for OTC trading by building an intermediary platform on which both the merchants and the users trade freely,” commented Binance spokesperson.
However, the most controversial thing about this move is that both – WeChat and Alipay, is known to be not allowing its users to take part in any cryptocurrency-related actions on their payment platforms. Earlier this year, in May, WeChat updated its payment policy adding that the service will eliminate accounts that engage in cryptocurrency trading.
Alipay also has been blocking accounts that are involved with cryptocurrencies.
“Alipay closely monitors over-the counter (OTC) transactions to identify irregular behavior and ensure compliance with relevant regulations. If any transactions are identified as being related to bitcoin or other virtual currencies, we immediately stop the relevant payment services,” said a spokesperson from Alipay.
Just for a reminder, just recently Binance launched its new P2P trading facility that will allow users to trade crypto against the Chinese Yuan.
“Binance has launched P2P trading functionality with BTC, ETH and USDT available for trading against CNY (Chinese Yuan). Access to P2P trading will be initially provided to Android users (Version: 1.12.1) that have Binance accounts registered for over 30 days. Please download or update to the latest Binance Android app for access to this service. We will slowly roll out this service to iOS and web interface users going forward”
Lately, Binance has been very active in launching new fiat gateway platforms in the U.S., Singapore, Uganda, and Jersey. Moreover, the company has set future plans to expand with new exchanges in Argentina, Bermuda, and Turkey.
