Mastercard Ends Partnership With Binance in Bahrain and 3 Other Countries
- Date: 26-Aug-2023
- Source: Gulf Insider
- Sector:Financial Markets
- Country:Bahrain
Mastercard Ends Partnership With Binance in Bahrain and 3 Other Countries
The winding down of Mastercard’s relationship with Binance comes amid an increasingly fraught legal and public relations crisis for the world’s largest crypto exchange
Mastercard and crypto exchange Binance announced the end of their four crypto card programmes in four countries, including Bahrain.
A Mastercard spokesperson said the joint crypto card programme in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Bahrain will come to an end as of September 22, Reuters reported.
In a separate announcement, Binance’s customer service account announced the breakup in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday evening.
“The Binance Card will no longer be available to users in Latin America and the Middle East,” said the account.
“Only a tiny portion of our users (less than 1% of users in the markets mentioned) are impacted,” it added.
The Binance cards allowed users to make payments in traditional currencies, funded by their cryptocurrency holdings on the exchange.
Mastercard-Binance partnership terminated
The decision will not impact any of Mastercard’s other crypto card programmes, its spokesperson said.
Binance said its Mastercard partnership also will no longer include Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
The Mastercard, when asked to confirm exactly which nations in the Middle East would be affected, said in an email there were “only four pilot