Binance has decided to temporarily halt bank transfers in US dollars for international users. The decision will go into effect on February 8. Binance, while has not explained its reason behind this decision, has been facing banking-related issues in the US. Its international money transfer partner Signature Bank recently said it would only process crypto trades via Binance for users whose accounts have at least $100,000 (roughly Rs. 82 lakh). This has left Binance scouting for another bank transfer partner that could facilitate international or ‘SWIFT’ transfers.
In separate tweets, Binance as well as its CEO Changpeng Zhao, announced the development for users. Both skipped to explain the exact motive behind this temporary suspension of services.
As per Zhao, only 0.01 percent of Binance’s monthly active users will be affected by this decision and soon, the service will be up and running again.
It is worth noting that USD bank transfers are leveraged by only 0.01% of our monthly active users.
However, we appreciate that this is still a bad user experience and the team is working on quickly resolving this issue. https://t.co/heCfWIomAX
— CZ :large_orange_diamond: Binance (@cz_binance) February 6, 2023
The crypto exchange, earlier last week, published a list of 144 nations from where USD bank transfers will be hit by its decision. These nations include Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, China, Japan, and Kenya among others.
“Currently, the USD (SWIFT) bank deposit/withdrawal channel does not support a number of countries. Please note that fund transfers from the below list of countries will be rejected and returned to the sender’s wallet. The amount returned will be net of any administrative fees incurred. Returns generally take eight to twenty business days depending on the country,” Binance noted in its post.
The decision has resulted in the outflow of a big chunk of dollar-pegged stablecoins like Tether and USD Coin among others, CNBC reported citing Arkham Intelligence.
As per DefiLlama, US dollars worth more than $172 million (roughly Rs. 1,422 crore) have left Binance in recent days. Meanwhile, Binance US has clarified that this suspension will have no impact on its users.
Binance’s decision has not impacted its native BNB token.