Following the launch of its first fiat to crypto exchange Binance Uganda two days ago, the company announced today that it is now accepting deposits of Ugandan shillings (UGX).

Trading in BTC and ETH to Start Today

The exchange opened deposits on Wednesday and will offer BTC/UGX and ETH/UGX trading pairs at 10 a.m. Uganda time, according to an official announcement. For now, it appears these will be the only trading pairs on Binance’s Ugandan exchange, as opposed to the 300+ cryptocurrencies it has listed on its main platform.

Users can deposit their UGX into Binance accounts using their Yo! payments mobile payment account, and Binance provides detailed instructions on how to do so in its latest announcement regarding the deposits. Users must first bind their yo! payments account to their Binance account and verify their identity via KYC.

Binance first announced their Ugandan exchange four months ago and offered rewards of its native coin BNB to the first 20,000 registrants, which were distributed earlier today.

Users of Binance’s main exchange can use the native token to reduce their trading fees, but its unclear as of this writing whether this new exchange will offer the same deal. The fact that BNB was distributed as a reward for early signup indicates it may be. The company said that all users will be exempt from trading fees for the first month.

The platform is reportedly able to handle 1.4 million transactions per second, so Binance is prepared for a heavy load, and over $1 billion USD in crypto is traded on their main exchange per day.

Committed to Expanding in Africa

“We are extremely proud to officially launch our first fiat-crypto exchange in Uganda,” said Binance CEO Wei Zhoh, adding,

“This is only the first step in our efforts to use blockchain technology to support sustainable economic development in Africa.”

Binance is indeed strongly committed to expanding in Africa, a country where it sees vast opportunity particularly because of how little access exists to traditional banking. In his medium post entitled ’10 Reasons Why Binance Labs is Fully Committed to Africa,’ Binance Labs Director Benjamin Rameau states:

“In developed markets, crypto has the potential to disrupt a flawed financial system. That is significant, but not necessarily transformative. In emerging and frontier markets, it has the potential to create a financial system when none existed before.”

An environment like Africa’s offers the chance to install an economic system that includes digital assets from the ground up, and Uganda is already leading the initiative. The country has garnered government support for cryptocurrency, and played host to blockchain conferences and events, including the African Blockchain Conference in Kampala in 2019.