• Binance Pay has seen growing interest in Africa, Eurasia and Eastern Europe.
• It has on-boarded major online merchant platforms and real-world retailers to its payment rail.
• The service is focused on building partnerships and working alongside industry participants.
Binance Pay Sees Growing Interest in Emerging Markets
Binance’s payment arm, Binance Pay, has seen increasing adoption in African, Asian and Eastern European countries as it bridges cryptocurrencies as a payment source for goods and services according to regional business development lead Pakning Luk. The payments service has attracted over 30 million users since its launch in 2021.
Partnerships Further Extend Reach of Binance Pay
A strategic partnership with WooCommerce is expected to expand the reach of Binance Pay further, as an estimated 40% of global websites use the e-commerce plugin. This allows cryptocurrency users to make payments with 70 different tokens for merchants served by WooCommerce. Furthermore, remittance and online shopping are key use cases for its user base in regions like Africa, South Asia and Eurasian countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Car-hailing services like Uber, Bolt and Grab can also be paid for with crypto through an integration with an aggregator platform.
Binance Pay Already Active in Ukraine
Before the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Binance Pay had already established itself in Ukraine through two merchant partnerships: local supermarket chain Varus and gas station chain WOG.
Competition or Collaboration?
When asked whether Binance Pay envisioned itself as a competitor to the likes of PayPal in the future, Luk said that the service was more focused on building partnerships and working alongside industry participants rather than competition. Suggestions of becoming a possible crypto-to-fiat on-ramp for PayPal were also explored as Binance views itself as a payment infrastructure akin to Visa or Mastercard.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Binance’s payment arm is seeing increased interest from emerging markets as it looks to bridge cryptocurrencies into everyday payments for goods and services via strategic partnerships such as WooCommerce which serves 40% of global websites; car hailing services such as Uber; remittances; online shopping; existing footprints such as Varus & WOG supermarkets/gas stations chain etc.. It remains open however if it will become a direct competitor or partner with other existing players like PayPal which could facilitate fiat conversion using cryptocurrency rails.