Binance has announced a fiat gateway for South African users, allowing them to make Rand deposits. This will also enable South Africans to buy cryptocurrencies with their local bank accounts.
CEO Changpeng Zhao made the announcement on day one of the Blockchain Africa conference being held in Johannesburg this week.
This is part of an ongoing push into Africa that started in Uganda in 2018: “Africa illustrates one of the largest demands and instrumental use cases for cryptocurrency, notably for financial access. According to the World Bank, approximately 66% of sub-saharan africans are listed as unbanked. So instead of trying to bank the unbanked, let’s try and Bitcoin the un-Bitcoined.”
With a foothold in 35 African countries, Zhao said South Africa was one of the bigger countries that the company had planned to service:
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, currently supports trading in 180 countries and handles over 1.4 millions transactions per second. The value of its global transactions is around $4B per day.
It was also announced that the Binance Charity Foundation would be donating $1M to support the growth and development of blockchain education in South Africa.
