Binance South Africa responds to community requests; highlights crypto-education drive
Binance recently launched a fiat on-ramp for the South African Rand [ZAR]. With a noted crypto-entity such as Binance entering one of Africa’s most vibrant marketplaces, the country’s interest in crypto escalated even more than before. The exchange offers its users five ZAR trading pairs namely, BTC/ZAR, BNB/ZAR, ETH/ZAR, USDT/ZAR, and BUSD/ZAR. However, a notable entry not on this list is XRP/ZAR.
In an exclusive interview with AMBCrypto, Tanya Knowles, Binance SA Lead, spoke about the team noting an increasing demand for XRP from its community of users. While Knowles did not allude to any future plans for listing the XRP/ZAR trading pair, she did recognize the popularity of XRP. She said,
“…We have launched five trading pairs, but we haven’t launched XRP, for example, and that has been one of the requests that is coming from some of our users already. So, these sorts of things we would need to roll out.”
Knowles wasn’t done, however. While emphasizing on fine-tuning user experience in the country, she highlighted the exchange’s keen interest in educating people about crypto, adding that it will be one of its first steps going forward. This is a continuation of the plan Binance proposed in India, with the exchange collaborating with WazirX for a Blockchain fund to raise crypto-awareness across the country.
Knowles also believes that following the South African Rand’s over 40% drop in value against the U.S dollar since the start of 2020, crypto can possibly be used to help people hold on to their hard-earned funds.
The essential part of Binance’s establishment in South Africa has been bringing international projects to the country’s users. While announcing on-ramp support for ZAR, Binance also made ‘Instant Buy with Visa’ available to users in the country.
The CZ-led exchange already services 35 African nations, with South Africa being the largest country being served by the exchange. In fact, Binance’s expansion to the South African market may have been expected to an extent since, the country is among the top five countries in the world, with respect to cryptocurrency ownership.
Binance’s South Africa venture, like those in India and Indonesia (Countries where Binance has expanded as well), is a statement highlighting the exchange’s intent to identify and build on the crypto-market potential of emerging markets across the world. This potential is evidenced by the fact that according to Coin Dance, the LocalBitcoins volume last week in the South African market was worth over ZAR 13M.
