U.K. Payment Network Freezes Withdrawals for Binance Customers

Two days after the FCA issued a ban on Binance operations in the United Kingdom, Binance customers are now facing problems of withdrawals. As per the latest Financial Times report, Binance’s U.K customers have lost the ability to withdraw and deposit Sterling Pounds via Faster payments, one of the country’s major payment systems.

On Monday, June 28, Binance announced that the ability to remove Sterling Pounds via Faster Payments had been “suspended for maintenance”. However, Binance hasn’t commented how long would it take to resume normal operations.

Faster Payments is a widely used payment network by U.K. banks to move money to and fro from the exchanges. The recent suspension of withdrawals and deposits creates a major barrier in the liquidity flow between crypto and fiat. On Monday, several people reached out to Binance on Twitter enquiring about the suspension from Faster Payments. However, Binance noted that its U.K customers can still move the money using bank cards.

Binance: FCA Ban Has No Direct Impact On Services

Soon after the FCA notice for Binance came out over the last week, the crypto exchange issued a statement saying that the ban won’t have any direct impact on Binance’s services. In a Twitter thread on Monday, June 28, the exchange wrote:

We are aware of recent reports about an FCA UK notice in relation to Binance Markets Limited (BML). BML is a separate legal entity and does not offer any products or services via the Binance.com website.

The Binance Group acquired BML May 2020 and has not yet launched its UK business or used its FCA regulatory permissions. The FCA UK notice has no direct impact on the services provided on Binance.com.

We take a collaborative approach in working with regulators and we take our compliance obligations very seriously. We are actively keeping abreast of changing policies, rules and laws in this new space.

Apart from the U.K, Binance has also been facing tough regulatory actions in other jurisdictions like Japan and Germany.