Binance US has implemented a service named “Pay” for US consumers, which its global parent launched to users outside the US in 2021.
Binance US, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, has finally launched its Binance Pay service, 22 months after the global exchange offered the functionality to its users outside the United States in 2021.
The service, which began as a beta version for peer-to-peer payments in February 2021 and was expanded to include merchant transactions on March 12, allows mobile users of the Binance app to transfer almost 150 supported cryptocurrencies without costs instantaneously.
A blog post from Binance US on December 13 emphasizes that Pay transactions will have no gas or transaction fees and that the app is only available on mobile as it prepares to launch a web version “in the near future.”
Meanwhile, amid recent negative press surrounding Binance global, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) praised the Binance American branch, adding, “Keep building!”
Binance.US customers will need to update to the current version of the app, go through identification verification, and load their Pay wallet to gain access to the new functionalities.
However, the service only supports transactions between Binance US mobile app users. Every 24 hours, users can get up to $1 million in cryptocurrency.
The latest announcement comes at a difficult time for the global crypto market.
Binance’s Bitcoin balance has dropped by over 42,000 in the last 24 hours, amounting to $754 million at the time of writing, although the exchange still has a Bitcoin balance in excess of 527,304 BTC, according to on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass.
The withdrawals are believed to have occurred in response to a Reuters report on December 13 that suggested the US Department of Justice is nearing the end of an investigation into the exchange that began in 2018, with US prosecutors reportedly split on whether there is enough evidence to press criminal charges against the exchange and its executives.
Furthermore, there have been new concerns raised in the crypto community about Binance’s finances, with accounting and financial experts consulted by the Wall Street Journal in a Dec. 10 report suggesting that Binance’s proof of reserves raise a number of red flags, while community members fear the worst.
CZ said on Twitter on December 14 that “things appear to have stabilized,” adding that the withdrawals handled yesterday were not even among the top five in the company’s history.
