Binance confirms Ukraine card withdrawal halt
Binance has stopped direct fiat withdrawals to Visa and Mastercard cards for users in Ukraine from December 29, 2025, according to an email the exchange sent to local clients that Ukrainian financial portal Minfin published. BNB traded around $855, up roughly 0.5% on the day, as of December 30, based on data from CoinMarketCap, while Bitcoin hovered near $87,400, about 2.6% lower over 24 hours according to the same source.
What exactly stopped for Ukrainian users
The Binance email tells Ukrainian users that the exchange suspended three services until further notice. Minfin lists them as direct withdrawals to Visa/Mastercard bank cards, automated Recurring Buy orders, and existing limit orders to buy assets with fiat. An English recap from Antikor reproduces the same wording.
Withdrawal to cards: You will no longer be able to withdraw funds directly to Visa/Mastercard cards. This feature is suspended until further notice.
At the same time, Binance kept most inflow rails open. The email, as summarized by Minfin and Antikor, says users can still top up balances and buy crypto with Visa or Mastercard, fund accounts through Apple Pay and Google Pay, and use SWIFT transfers for both deposits and withdrawals. That structure keeps on-ramps largely intact but blocks the most convenient off-ramp to local and foreign bank cards.
SWIFT, ZEN.com and P2P fill the gap
Both Minfin and Antikor note that Binance points Ukrainian users toward SWIFT transfers and alternative routes such as P2P trading when they need to exit into fiat quickly. The notice also mentions payment provider Zen.com as an available method but stresses that full deposit and withdrawal functionality through Zen.com will only return from January 6, 2026.
Zen.com’s own help-center post on its Binance integration confirms this timeline. The article, updated on December 17, says that for clients in Ukraine Binance will offer Zen.com for deposits and withdrawals “expected from January 6, 2026,” SWIFT bank transfers for both directions, card deposits and crypto purchases with Visa or Mastercard, and Apple Pay and Google Pay for deposits, while card-based deposits and withdrawals count as “temporarily unavailable” after December 29 until further notice (Zen.com help center).
Crypto news outlet Incrypted, which published a screenshot of the Binance email in Russian, adds an important nuance. After the email went out, Binance representatives told Incrypted that these payment changes in Ukraine apply only to users who previously relied on Bifinity-linked services, and that Zen.com for Ukrainian users will return from January 6 after technical work on the partner infrastructure. In the same response, Binance stressed that P2P operations for Ukrainians remain unaffected.
Regulatory driver: Bifinity UAB exits and new fiat partners step in
Zen.com directly connects the changes to “regulatory updates” and links to a Binance announcement. Binance set that context more clearly on December 15 in an official FAQ titled “Bifinity UAB Services Termination and Replacement Providers.” In that document the exchange explains that Bifinity UAB, its Lithuanian fiat processor, will stop providing services on December 31, 2025, because of changes in applicable laws and regulations, and that the Bifinity terms of use will terminate on the same date (Binance FAQ).
Binance says in the same FAQ that it will route affected EU fiat flows through new regulated providers. French firm Harmoniie SAS, which operates under the Ouitrust brand, will hold EUR and DKK funds for EEA users, while Lithuanian-licensed UAB ZEN.COM will hold PLN and other supported currencies. For users outside the EEA, Bahrain-based BPay Global will act as the new fiat custodian. That framework shows why Zen.com appears in the Ukrainian email and in Minfin’s breakdown even though its full functionality only returns in early January.
Incrypted reports that Binance also framed the Ukrainian card changes as part of the broader Bifinity migration and not as a direct response to the National Bank of Ukraine. The outlet notes that Binance told its newsroom the decision “does not relate to the NBU” and does not touch P2P trades, which remain one of the main channels for local hryvnia liquidity.
New email, old problem for hryvnia cards
Incrypted flags a discrepancy that matters for anyone trying to read the email as a fresh shock. Its article notes that Binance already lacked working fiat withdrawals to Ukrainian bank cards since March 2023, when large exchanges stopped processing hryvnia-denominated card flows after the National Bank of Ukraine tightened wartime capital controls on crypto-related transfers. A 2023 report from ForkLog recorded that Binance and peers confirmed a temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals via hryvnia bank cards and redirected users to P2P.
Against that backdrop, the December 29, 2025 “temporary suspension” email to Ukrainian users mostly formalizes an outage that had already persisted for almost three years. The concrete new elements sit in the removal of Recurring Buy and fiat limit orders, the explicit classification of card withdrawals as blocked until further notice, and the shift of fiat off-ramp messaging toward SWIFT and, from January 6, Zen.com.
Why this matters for Ukrainian crypto flows
For Ukrainian users who mainly rely on Binance to move value between crypto balances and local banking rails, the updated rules leave a very different mix of exits. Today the official routes from Binance into fiat for this cohort are SWIFT transfers, later Zen.com once it comes back online, and P2P trades that convert crypto into hryvnia or foreign currency off-platform. Direct “withdraw to card” remains unavailable in the email, on Minfin’s summary, and in the English synopsis from Antikor.
That setup raises friction for small, frequent withdrawals that previously flowed through card rails and forces more users into SWIFT, with its extra banking scrutiny, or into P2P desks and local exchanges. At the same time, BNB’s steady price around $855 while Bitcoin sells off points to a market view that treats the move as regional fiat plumbing rather than a signal about Binance’s wider solvency or growth. The timing and wording across Binance’s FAQ, Zen.com’s help article and Incrypted’s follow-up show a clear priority for the exchange in late 2025. It needs to finish the Bifinity UAB wind-down under new EU rules without interrupting core crypto services, even if that means another round of card pain for Ukrainian users who have already lived with broken off-ramps since 2023.
