UK Traders Can Now Make Free and Instant GBP Transactions Using Faster Payments

August 21, 2019, London, UK — According to a report published by CEX.IO, 79% of the customers who use this platform are relying on domestic bank transfers when they want to make fiat payments. The main reason for this is the introduction of suitable payment options for all popular currencies (USD, EUR, GBP). Moreover, the platform managed to negotiate overall lower limits, as well as commissions. One such payment option, Faster Payments, is a domestic transfer aimed at traders from the UK who can use it for instant GBP transactions to and from the platform. By introducing this method, CEX.IO has taken a step forward towards winning in the race between competitors.

Fiat processing is often taken for granted in online crypto exchanges, but the adoption of this feature has a long and turbulent history.  At the point of time when people who are not tech-savvy nerds entered the crypto sphere, they were not really prepared to use all the cutting-edge tools that crypto-enthusiasts embrace. As a matter of fact, they were primarily relying on payment methods they felt comfortable using, such as credit cards and bank transfers. Many jurisdictions are still reviewing opportunity to approach the cryptocurrency regulation, and according to the surveys, people in most of countries do not understand how blockchain transactions work.

After a while, banks started to recognize the importance of crypto payments. Nevertheless, they are taking it slow with the adoption process, carefully examining every step. In fact, even in 2019, the progress is barely visible, as each payment processor must undergo a thorough evaluation process. Every payment processor was made after various counterparty risk assessments and protracted negotiations. Moreover, a company that wants to use fiat processing must meet a plethora of regulatory requirements, and exchanges are not really fond of that.

Being a company from the UK, CEX.IO made domestic EUR transfers available first with SEPA. However, this was not stable until 2017, when its use for depositing and withdrawing money grew from 27% to 84% in approximately two years. Moreover, the growth trend has been visible ever since.

After that, CEX.IO continued building various payment processing and banking relationships not only in the UK but also in the US. The result of this effort was the support of ACH for USD payments and the inclusion of the GBP Faster Payments option. As a matter of fact, Faster Payments was very well received by the customers – although it was introduced in May 2019, it already became the leader for GBP bank payments, as 97% of them are processed with this method.

CEX.IO Head of Finance, Dmytro Kalynovskiy, stated, “Based on our research, UK traders are tired of getting hit with high fees and high minimum withdrawals. That is why we launched Faster Payments — a payment tool targeting specifically UK customers with money flows in GBP, and offering free payments of up to 250,000 GBP at the touch of a button, with protection from losses caused by unauthorized payments.”

CEX.IO embraces users from all over the world and always does its best to meet their needs. Users have various intentions upon coming to the platform – some want to buy their way into the world of cryptocurrencies, and others are professional traders utilizing complex strategies with the help of CEX.IO tools. Therefore, the funds these users use and how they move them may vary, which is why it is of utmost importance to take every possible scenario into account and improve it to create better conditions.

“As we successfully process significant amounts of funds for our users, our existing bank partners trust us more and other banks want to work with us. And, since we have proven ourselves to be a reliable counterparty, we are in a position to ask for better conditions. These terms represent the level of trust we’ve developed with our partners as well as demonstrate our passion with which we fight for the interests of our customers,” concluded Kalynoskiy.