- Binance yesterday announced Bfinity, a crypto payment provider
- Online merchants will be able to accept over 50 cryptocurrencies for payment
- Customers will also be able to buy and sell crypto and NFTs at checkout
Binance yesterday announced the launch and implementation into its platform of Bfinity, a “fiat-to-crypto payments provider” that “connects businesses, merchants and millions of users to the world of crypto and blockchain”. Details are thin on the ground for now, but what can we learn from the announcement and the Bfinity website about this new product and what it offers?
Bfinity Targets Online Merchants
From the literature, Bfinity’s core product is clearly aimed at online merchants, allowing them to accept cryptocurrency payments as easily as fiat payments, a service that is still in its infancy while, at the same time, the crypto space grows exponentially.
In its press release, Binance opined that “cryptocurrencies will eventually power the economy for Web 3.0”, and so clearly wants to be at the forefront of helping online businesses adapt to this new iteration of the internet. This it will do by offering easy acceptance (and presumably conversion to fiat) of over 50 cryptocurrencies, with further options coming in the future.
The rationale behind this is simple – Binance is leveraging its status as a crypto titan to become the go-to plugin for merchants wanting to accept cryptocurrencies, which, quite rightly, they see as only expanding in the future. There are other plugins available (for example, Coinbase offers Coinbase Commerce that does the same thing), but no product has yet grabbed the bull by the horns, which Binance clearly hopes to do with Bfinity.
Would You Like an NFT With That?
Bfinity isn’t just for businesses though. Bfinity’s plugin also seems to offer the chance for users of those same merchants to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies at the point of checkout, which is a rather odd feature – after all, if you’re buying dog food, are you really going to stop the checkout process to buy or sell some bitcoin? Probably not, but perhaps in the future buying crypto is going to be like buying gum at the supermarket.
Bfinity also appears to be adding NFTs into the mix, with the website promising that in the future customers will be able to buy NFTS through the retailer as well as cryptocurrencies. To add to the prior analogy, Bfinity expects customers to want to buy paintings as well as gum at the checkout.
Big Step Forward for Adoption
Bfinity has only just been announced and so some features may be added, removed, or tweaked before full launch, but at the moment it seems that the crypto acceptance feature (which thankfully is Bfinity’s core offering) will be much more valuable to merchants than the ability for their customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Either way, Binance has a good chance to take the lead in a part of the industry that has so far failed to catch on (hence the fact that “what can I buy with crypto?” is still an argument). Solutions like Bfinity are a good step in the right direction as far as crypto adoption is concerned, but whether it can be the biggest fish in the pond remains to be seen.
