- Binance has halted both GBP withdrawal options on its platforms
- Bank withdrawals were suspended yesterday and debit card withdrawals followed soon after
- The suspension looks to be related to the FCA’s recent warning over Binance’s lack of regulation
Binance has suspended GBP withdrawals following increased attention from the British financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Reports emerged overnight that the faster payments option was “suspended for maintenance” but this suspension has since been extended to the debit card option, leaving GBP users needing to find another offramp. The unplanned halting of withdrawals comes just days after the FCA caused headlines in the UK by announcing that Binance UK was not allowed to begin operations in its current state, which mainstream media outlets took to mean an entire site-wide ban.
British Binance Users Forced to Offramp Elsewhere
Binance introduced GBP withdrawals via instant bank transfer in January, making life easier for British Binance users who until then had needed to send their funds elsewhere to cash out. Card withdrawals were added in February, and until today British Binance users had enjoyed a seamless experience, with withdrawals arriving straight into their accounts in minutes.
Until last night there was no suggestion that the FCA’s warning to consumers over Binance, which did not amount to a ban, would lead to complications over their ability to allow users to withdraw funds to bank accounts. Indeed, given that Binance has at the time of writing yet to acknowledge the reasons for the halting of withdrawals, or if/when they might be coming back online, we don’t yet know if the two issues are related, but the timing suggests they must be.
FCA May Have Forced Payment Processors to Act
Faster Payments is a third-party payment processor who may have withdrawn their services following the FCA’s warning over Binance’s lack of regulation, or the FCA themselves may have been the driving force and asked Faster Payments to halt services to Binance. Similarly, Visa is the processor for the debit card withdrawals and may have been put under the same pressure.
While there is no hint that funds are no longer safe on Binance for UK users, they may have to go back to the older and more expensive methods of withdrawing their funds.
