Binance just announced it partnered with the French credit card service company Ingenico to bring in-store crypto payments via Binance Pay to two select merchants in Paris.
Initially, the test will only be available on Ingenico’s AXIUM terminals in France, but the top crypto exchange plans to eventually extend the pilot to other European countries where it’s approved to operate. Those countries include Italy, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Cyprus, and Sweden.
For now, the program will accept more than 50 cryptocurrencies through Ingenico’s AXIUM terminals. It will first be available at two top merchants in Paris — the popular bar Le Carlie, and Miss Opéra, a clothing store. The merchants will be paid in cryptocurrency until the next pilot in Quarter 2 when they can transition to fiat payments.
The new payment solution from Binance and Ingenico is an “all-in-one” device that will make onboarding merchants and consumers to cryptocurrency easier. And the partnership will likely grow, considering Ingenico leads the world in point-of-sale terminals with over 40 million terminals across 37 countries.
Of course, this isn’t Binance’s first move to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 payment systems. In August 2022, Binance successfully launched a prepaid crypto card in Argentina that it recently followed up with a similar launch in Brazil.
Payment Companies and Web3 Platforms Accelerate Crypto Adoption
The new partnership and pilot program from Binance and Ingenico is a big deal. But Binance isn’t the only Web3 platform to innovate with traditional payment companies. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve covered several stories about collaborations geared towards onboarding users from Web2 to Web3. Here are some of the top headlines.
First, three months ago, the global payments processor Stripe launched a tool that lets customers purchase cryptocurrency with fiat. For now, it’s only available to users in the U.S. Stripe also announced 16 Web3 partners including Audius, Magic Eden, and Argent.
Next, PayPal teamed up with the crypto wallet MetaMask to let users seamlessly purchase and transfer Ethereum. On December 15th, the new integration was rolled out to select users in the U.S. For now, users can buy ETH on MetaMask with their PayPal balance or credit card, and more cryptos are expected soon.
Finally, Visa recently released a technical piece on its website that explored the possibility of leveraging Ethereum blockchain to make automatic crypto payments. The paper comes on the heels of numerous Web3 ventures from Visa this past year.
Binance’s partnership with Ingenico is beginning slowly, with only two merchants chosen to accept in-store Binance Pay crypto payments. But considering the reach and ambition of both companies, it might not be long before crypto payments are an option to merchants and consumers all over Europe.