OKX And Bybit Eliminate Sanctioned Banks In Russia Via P2P Payment

Key Points:

• Bybit and OKX removed Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank due to international sanctions, affecting Russian users’ fiat-crypto transactions.
• Russian customers lose P2P payment options through Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank accounts.
• Binance’s removal of sanctioned banks follows a U.S. probe into potential sanctions violations.

Two prominent cryptocurrency exchanges, OKX and Bybit, have taken steps to exclude Russian banks that are subject to international financial sanctions from their payment options.

According to reports from Cointelegraph, both Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank have been removed from the list of peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions on Bybit and OKX.

Local users within Russia are no longer able to receive fiat currency in exchange for their cryptocurrencies through Tinkoff Bank or Sberbank accounts on the P2P platforms of OKX and Bybit.

As of now, OKX still supports fiat transfers to accounts at the Russian branch of Raiffeisen Bank and the Russian Standard Bank. These institutions are not currently under sanctions, according to the United States Treasury.

The situation came to public attention when The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had listed Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank as transfer methods.

However, on August 24, both banks disappeared from Binance’s P2P platform. A day later, the WSJ reported that these sanctioned banks were entirely removed from the list, citing a Binance spokesperson.

Binance, which had previously enabled Russian customers to use five sanctioned Russian banks for payments, has now eliminated this option due to compliance concerns. It’s worth noting that Binance’s P2P service website listed Ross Bank and Tinkoff Bank among the options for processing payments.

The move by cryptocurrency exchanges to exclude sanctioned Russian banks from their payment options may have implications for Binance’s legal troubles in the United States.

The company has been under scrutiny, and reports indicate that the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating whether Binance violated sanctions against Russia.

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