Binance US, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, has finally launched its Binance Pay service, 22 months after the global exchange launched the feature to its customers outside the United States in 2021.
The service, which began as a beta version for peer-to-peer payments in February 2021 before expanding to include merchant transactions on March 12, allows Binance app users to instantly transact nearly 150 supported cryptocurrencies without fees.
A blog post from Binance US on December 13 clarifies that Pay transactions will have no gas or transaction fees, and that the app is currently 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 unit, saying, “Keep building!”
Binance.US users would need to update to the latest version of the app, go through identity verification, and load their Pay wallet to gain access to the new features.
However, the service only facilitates transactions between Binance US mobile app users. Every 24 hours, users can receive up to $1 million in cryptocurrency.
The latest announcement comes at a difficult time for the global crypto exchange.
Binance’s Bitcoin (BTC) balance has dropped by over 42,000 in the last 24 hours, amounting to $754 million at the time of writing, but 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 Binance 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 stated on Twitter on December 14 that “things appear to have stabilized,” adding that the withdrawals processed yesterday were not even among the top five in the company’s history.
