Binance team up with peer-to-peer exchange Paxful

Announced Thursday December 12th, Binance will integrate P2P exchange Paxful to allow new fiat payment options to Binance users. Paxful’s Virtual Bitcoin Kiosk will exclusively serve Binance as an additional fiat-to-crypto on-ramp for its users. Joining additional fiat on-rap services like Koinal and Simplex.

Through Paxful’s services, they will be able to facilitate fiat payments in over 167 currencies. Giving Binance users the ability to access currencies like the Russian ruble, Euro, Vietnamese dong, Indonesian rupiah, Nigerian naira, and British pound among many others.

As a result of this partnership, users of Paxful will gain direct access to Binance. Further opening up digital asset trading as well as arbitrage trading to Paxful’s P2P network. Paxful CEO and founder Ray Yousseff had made the decision to decline offers from other top crypto exchanges in order to give exclusive service to Binance.

What is Paxful?

The peer-to-peer exchange was founded in 2015. Paxful connects traders in a P2P manner through its API services. Having recently reported conducting around $25 million in trades per week, according to data from UsefulTulips.

Binance users from China already had access to P2P trading on its platform through Chinese apps WeChat and AliPay. Although AliPay now monitor their platform for trading, as it is illegal under the companies terms and services.

The Binance exchange has slowly added stablecoins and fiat on-ramps to its platform under its “Venus” initiative. Currently supporting the Euro, Ruble, Turkish lira, Nigerian naira, Ukrainian hryvnia, Kazakhstani tenge and Indian rupee as fiat options.

Paxful’s market

The firms’ integration with Binance highlights a mutual interest according to Yousseff. While the U.S. takes up the majority of Paxful’s market, researcher Matt Ahlborg at startup accelerator dlab said the exchange is becoming a meaningful alternative in countries such as Africa.

Paxful has shown it remains strong even when other exchanges have struggled. Ahlborg says the reason in their ability to integration on a local level.

Ahlborg stated: “Paxful is able to onboard financially disconnected citizens of developing countries on a level that non-P2P OTC exchanges like Coinbase simply cannot,”. “Gift card remittance works 24/7 whereas Western Union only works during business hours of Nigerian Banks.”

We can compare between rival P2P exchange LocalBitcoins and Paxful (see charts below) show continues to show more growth then LocalBitcoins even if total volumes remain far lower.

LocalBitcoins historical trade volume data via Useful Tulips

Paxful historical trade volume data via UsefulTulips

