Binance Suspends Withdrawals and Deposits in Brazil Following New Central Bank Policy

This article is adapted from CoinDesk Brasil, a partnership between CoinDesk and InfoMoney, one of Brazil's leading financial news publications. Follow CoinDesk Brasil on Twitter.

Global crypto exchange Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals in Brazilian reals through the government's payment system Pix on Friday.

The company announced in a statement that it terminated a partnership with the local payment gateway Capitual, which operated Binance’s deposits and withdrawals via Pix for a year and eight months.

On its platform, Binance informed users that deposits via Pix are experiencing instability due to a policy change made by the Central Bank of Brazil (BC), without providing further details.

The service blockage coincides with the end of a deadline imposed by the BC for Pix providers to implement new KYC (know your customer) requirements.

“Binance will replace Capitual with a local payments provider with extensive experience, which will be announced soon,” the company stated, adding that it will take legal action against Capitual, without providing further details.

Binance is in the process of acquiring local brokerage Sim;paul, which has already been authorized by the Central Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company added.

Binance informed its users that withdrawals and deposits through Pix can take up to 72 hours to be cleared. The company added that users can still make peer-to-peer deposits and withdrawals.

This week, KuCoin, which also works with Capitual, announced a change in its know-your-customer (KYC) policies. The company started redirecting its users in the South American country to Capitual's website to complete their identity verification.

This article was translated by Andrés Engler and edited by CoinDesk. The original Portuguese can be found here.