When I got out today in the morning, an envelope was waiting for me in my mailbox. It was my BINANCE Card that I ordered about two weeks ago. I wrote a post on Leofinance about ordering this card and how eager I am to circumvent the banking system through any method I find at hand, but really don't remember the title of it. It's irrelevant now though.
So, after unwrapping the card which was nicely glued to a piece of paper similar to the one you get on the Binance card page, I had to activate it. To do that I jut opened my Binance account, got to my Card section, hit the activate card option and had to introduce my digital signature, which represents that three numbers code wrote on the back of the card, and my Google authenticator generated code. Active in less than one minute.
Topping up the card is as simple as it can get. You just have to transfer funds from your Binance spot wallet to your card wallet with the push of a button inside of your card wallet section. The card supports BTC, ETH, SPX, BUSD, BNB, EUR and SPX. I had some $35 worth of ETH on my spot wallet, exchanged those for BUSD, and transferred the BUSD to my card wallet.
I could have spent the ETH around as well, but don't really feel like doing that, I guess it's something psychological about spending volatile crypto for bananas... or pizza. I'd rather spend stable coins tbh. The dollar valuation of your card funds are shown in USD and that value fluctuates on a range of 1-2 cents because 1 BUSD is not perfectly nailed to $1 in value, but that's nothing to worry about.
I got to a supermarket after activating the card and bought some stuff that I paid for with the card, because I wanted to test if it really works and if it indeed involves zero fees to spend crypto around with this Binance card. Works flawlesly. The card automatically converts crypto to my national currency and there's absolutely no fee taken by Binance or Swipe, which is the payment service that facilitates the purchases with the card.
The notifications that I get after a purchase on my Binance app are in euros, but checked the value the card claimed to have been spent and it was exact the same amount I paid for the groceries in my national currency. Checked that in the dollar valuation of my card's wallet as well, before and after a purchase, and got to the same conclusion. It's commission free.
All of that in the case of using stablecoins and for small purchases for now. Binance claims that there's a 780 euros limit per day for card purchases and 270 euros for ATM withdrawals. I'm fine with that for now, and from what I remember, they're saying they plan on increasing the daily limits so it's only getting better.
The only thing that could fluctuate and somehow affect my purchasing power with the exact amount of money over a few months would be the fluctuation in value between my native currency and euros and dollars. These are quite insignificant tbh and a risk that I'm taking. The dollar shows signs of recovering so I will actually buy more from one month to another with the same amount.
I'd rather live with that than to take my crypto through the banking system, pay them fees, have them know all sort of personal details about me and so on. Overall I'm happy with the card, it's free, zero fees, it has contactless paying methods as well, google pay also but I'll skip that for the same reasons as with the banks, and this card is actually saving me from a lot of fees paid to exchanges when getting from crypto to fiat.
So far the best option I found for directly spending crypto around. I will for sure won't deposit high amounts of BUSD on it, as I don't plan on spending BTC or ETH in the near future, and even if the card gets lost or stolen I can freeze it from the app and order another one, which will cost me about $25, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for the convenience.
At this point I'm pondering whether I should close my bank account and go all in with using the Binance Card and Revolut... I highly recommend the Binance card though to whoever plans on spending crypto around at all sort of merchants and I can say that I'm a happier than happy, as a Binance user. Crypto mass adoption is gradually penetrating the banking and payments system and that's a good thing.
If you have any questions regarding the Binance card feel free and ask. Have a great day ahead and see you to the next one.
Thanks for attention,
Adrian
