In this post I want to share with you my impressions about the newly issued BINANCE Card through my real story of how I started using it .
Why? Because I think you must try it out, it's really another good service from the really well known exchange Binance.
When I first red the Binance announcement regarding the card, I remember I felt excited: in my mind there was the feeling of a great innovation coming to us, expecially for the fact that you are able to store cryptos in it.
My funny/romantic story with the Binance Card starts in mid September 2020: I was at see with my girlfriend here in Italy next by Rome, and we were planning to have lunch at a restaurant on the beach. But unfortunately I did forgot my physical wallet and she had no money with her. -.-" !!
What I've done? I had received an email by Binance some day before, telling me I was now elegible for the Card (Italy was not supported yet, now yes). So with my smartphone I logged in on the desktop exchange version, and I remembered those 3 important facts:
- Submitting request for the Binance Crypto Card is totally FREE. Really.
- In a matter of microseconds, you will have at your disposal a "Virtual Card", that is: a card number, expire date, CVC code and name of cardholder, so that you are immediately able to make online purchases.
- You can connet this Virtual card to Google Pay/Android Pay/Apple Pay in few minutes on your smartphone, and use the NFC ( Near Field Connectivity) of your smartphone to pay in any physical shop that accepts Visa contactless payments, all around the world.
- The real plastic card will arrive at your adress in 2-3 weeks, also at no cost. (but you can already use the card as a virtual one).
The only constraint is to have a Binance account with KYC verified. (Don't you have one? Consider opening one now here, with my referral link so to enjoy a 10% lifetime fee reduction; in case, here also referral ID: WUCIXS9J ).
So yes, you can imagine now the solution to the Pizza-at-the-Beach problem: while having lunch, I've just logged on the desktop version of the exchange Binance ( not the app!), asked for the Card , used the Virtual card number and CVC and expire date (informations shown on the Card Wallet upon entering a OneTimePassword via sms), and finally registered it in my Google Pay app as preferred payment method.
This took 5 to 10 minutes more or less. Then, how to fund the Card? This is another good feature of the Binance Visa Card:
- You can transfer instantly four cryptocurrencies from your Spot Wallet (used for trading) to the Card wallet: Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Swipe (SXP) and Binance USD (BUSD) , the stablecoin issued by the exchange.
- What I most appreciated is: you can also TRANSFER BACK to your Spot Wallet those cryptos at any time, any amount, with no fees and no delay.
Since I want to hold or trade my cryptos for a while, and don't want to cash out them soon, I think this is an optimal choice.
Turning back to the story, at the end of the lunch I've asked for the bill, I had to pay 36 € . An online conversion tool told me this was around 42 $ at the time.
I took a bit of my Bitcoin from Spot Wallet, 43 $ worth, and moved them to the Card Wallet, no more no less, up to 8 decimal digits (that is, at the Satoshi precision :-) ) and after a coffee (always a coffee at the end of a lunch) I paid contactless with the smartphone via Google Pay.
Tada! It worket! I have to be honest with you, I was a bit afraid that something could go wrong.... but absolutely no.
Few minutes later, I checked on Binance account, the transaction showed up, telling me exactly what happened, here is a screenshot of the overview of the Card Wallet:
As you can see, everything is really simple: over the card image, there is a button "Show card details" , if you click it, via OTP sms on your phone, the missing details will show up (really smart! please remember, all of this can just be done through the Desktop web version).
Buy sliding up and down the 4 accepted cryptos tab on the right, you can decide wich ones should be converted first (in case of transaction).
What's interesting is also the low fees : 0.9 % of the net amount you have to pay, and the conversion of your crypto to Eur or Usd is made just at the LAST instant before the transaction occur.
But LOOK at the center , here is a good tip: even if there is a 0.9% fee, actually binance gives you 1% CashBack (for all at-the-merchant purchases and for most of online ones), without any condition ! So you are actually not paing this service. And more over, you can have up to 8% (that's enourmous) idepending on the total amount of BNB coin you have on your account:
Read again, NOT depending on some "stake" amount as in other platforms; here, all the BNB on you account, those on Spot, Futures and Margin wallets, but also on Staking and Savings products, will count toward your avarage 30 days BNB holding. From the table above, by just owning 10 BNB (wich could be very well staked or on order to sell) you can get 2% cashback, sent to your Card Wallet as BNB coins.
I know that out there, in the crypto universe, many crypto cards already exist, but you probably know Binance is one of the biggest exchange, for number of asset listed but mainly when you rank them by exchanged volume, and low fees. So being able to couple my Hodler+Day_trading activities with the possibility of instantly fund a card with my cryptos, it's so good.
Thank you for reading !
Really, thanks a lot. Hope you are pleased of reading this article, even if I know that you are here mostly for tips :-)
