There was a time when banks hesitated to support cryptocurrency-related businesses. However, times are changing!
Leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance has announced its integration with a Turkish bank, Akbank that would facilitate the deposit and withdrawal of the Turkish Lira (LRY) on its platform. Akbank is one of the largest banks in Turkey, with total assets exceeding $300 billion.
According to an official announcement on Binance’s blog yesterday, the development is the first time the exchange will be going into a partnership with a major financial institution that would see the bank’s services being integrated into the exchange.
At the moment, Binance noted that the service would be made available only to its desktop and iOS applications. However, the exchange did not specify whether or not the service would be rolled out for Android users in the future.
The initiative would also ensure that deposit and withdrawal services for the TRY conducted on the platform would attract meager fees as opposed to other ways of sending money in Turkey.
In addition, using the TRY to purchase cryptocurrencies on the exchange will now be made more accessible than before.
Commenting on the development, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) stated:
As part of our mission to continue working on increasing the freedom of money worldwide and notably in a country that is fast-adopting digital assets, we are expanding the available options to lower the barrier to entry.
He added that as more Turks use the service to conduct any business transaction due to its low transaction fees, there is a possibility that the initiative would further boost the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the country.
It can be recalled last year that Binance added support for the Turkish Lira to be used as a direct fiat-to-crypto buying facility on its platform, where the exchange’s users can buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and XRP using the TRY.
The exchange subsequently added four trading pairs for the TRY currency, including BNB/TRY, BUSD/TRY, USDT/TRY, and BTC/TRY trading pairs.
Meanwhile, despite the exchange’s presence in several European nations, Coinfomania recently reported that Binance does not have the regulatory approval to operate in Malta. The Malta Financial Services Agency (MFSA) tried to address the long-held misconception that has described Binance as a “Malta-based exchange.”
