Binance Adds New Fiat Payment Options Through Integration With P2P Exchange Paxful

Binance has teamed up with peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful to add new ways to purchase bitcoin.

Announced Thursday, Paxful's Virtual Bitcoin Kiosk will exclusively serve Binance as an additional fiat-to-crypto on-ramp for its users, joining services such as Koinal and Simplex.

Through the kiosk, Paxful can facilitate fiat payments in over 167 currencies.

Paxful users will also have direct access to Binance, further opening up digital asset trading - and therefore price arbitrage - to Paxful's P2P network.

While Paxful had offers from some of the top-10 crypto exchanges, the P2P exchange is exclusively providing its kiosk service to Binance, Paxful CEO and founder Ray Yousseff said in a telephone interview.

Founded in 2015, Paxful connects traders in a peer-to-peer fashion through its API service and has recently been conducting some $25 million in trades per week, according to UsefulTulips.

The exchange has slowly added stablecoins to its platform under its "Venus" initiative and currently supports the euro, ruble, Turkish lira, Nigerian naira, Ukrainian hryvnia, Kazakhstani tenge and Indian rupee as fiat options, according to Binance.

While the U.S. takes up the lion's share of Paxful's market, researcher Matt Ahlborg at startup accelerator dlab said the exchange is becoming a meaningful alternative in sub-Saharan Africa as ex-pats look to send funds back home.

Paxful has shown resilience even when other exchanges have struggled, in what Ahlborg attributes to its integration on a local level.

Comparisons between rival P2P exchange LocalBitcoins and Paxful show more continuous growth for the latter platform through the 2018 bear market, even if total volumes remain far lower.