While two of the biggest U.K. banks, Barclays and Santander, have stopped working with the world's top cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Mastercard Inc. MA and Visa Inc. V have decided to continue working with the firm.
What Happened: According to a Thursday Financial Times report, Visa told the news outlet that it is “aware of the recent FCA statement regarding Binance” and that it has been in communication with the exchange to monitor the situation as it develops.
Similarly, Mastercard said that it was continuing "to monitor this situation, including how the exchanges fulfill their regulatory requirements.”
Earlier, Visa has partnered with Binance to offers a Visa-branded debit card allowing crypto spending to customers located in a big chunk of Europe.
Still, the exchange does not issue the cards directly itself. Instead, it relies on its partner Contis, a Visa partner with an e-money license from Lithuania’s central bank.
Binance relies on many payment partners to connect with the traditional financial system, including Checkout.com and Clear Junction — both of which are a part of major payment channels themselves. Some of those partners started cutting ties with the exchange as it finds itself in the midst of greater and greater regulatory scrutiny.
Namely, Clear Junction provided Binance with access to the European payment network SEPA, but on Monday, it announced that it would “no longer be facilitating payments” for the firm.
The U.K. payments firm BCB Group also broken up ties with Binance earlier this year. As of Wednesday, customers could not withdraw or deposit euros and sterling through neither U.K. Binance payment partner Faster Payments nor SEPA. Binance said it was "working as quickly as we can to make payment services available" to the users.
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