Binance has removed several sanctioned Russian banks from its peer-to-peer (P2P) trading service. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 25.
The news channel quoted a quote from Binance, which stated:
“We regularly update our systems to ensure compliance with local and global regulatory standards. When gaps are pointed out to us, we try to address and fix them as quickly as possible… [Payment methods that] that do not fit our compliance policy are not available on our platform.”
The report details that five banks are no longer available on Binance’s P2P crypto trading service. That service also includes options that allow users to make direct transfers to and from bank accounts in exchange for crypto.
Earlier this week, controversy arose around those Russian banks. On August 22 WJ reported that the company continued to allow peer-to-peer trading involving the Russian banks in question. In addition, volunteers from Binance allegedly advertised the lack of Russian trading restrictions on Telegram.
Later, reports from Russian media suggested that Binance was renaming certain banking options to hide their sanctioned status. Russia’s majority-owned state-owned Sberbank and branchless neobank Tinkoff were rendered as “green local card” and “yellow local card,” matching those two banks’ respective logo color schemes.
The Wall Street Journal also identifies Rosbank as one of the now delisted and sanctioned banks. It is unclear which other Russian banks were originally present on, or removed from, Binance’s peer-to-peer trading platform.
Binance is largely available to Russian users
Binance’s P2P exchange continues to support several other Russian banks that have not or only partially been sanctioned. The P2P exchange lists 16 Russian payment methods, including major banks such as Russian Standard Bank, Home Credit Bank, and Raiffeisenbank. Russian users can also make non-bank transfers through payment processors such as Payeer and Advcash.
In addition, the latest report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Russian users can use the delisted banks by manually entering bank details.
Binance’s P2P policy is separate from the more restrictive main exchange policy. But even that policy is being liberalized: while Binance placed a $10,000 limit on Russian accounts in April 2022, it lifted that policy in April 2023.
The post Binance removes five sanctioned Russian banks from P2P trading: WSJ first appeared on CryptoSlate.