Binance seeks Philippine partners Binance of billionaire

MANILA, Philippines — Changpeng Zhao is scouting for potential partners as it aims to expand its presence in the Philippines, a major and important market in Southeast Asia.

Zhao told reporters that he was amazed with the development in the Philippines compared to 10 years ago when he last visited the country.

“We want to grow the global presence by going more local in multiple places. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines is a very important market for us,” Zhao said in a press conference.

Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange founded in July 2017. Its cryptocurrency and blockchain related services include investments, fan tokens, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and more.

Zhao cited the country’s robust macroeconomic fundamentals as well as strong leadership and governance.

“This is the type of growth markets are the markets we want to be in because we are in a relatively new technology field and it’s a fast growing field,” he said.

Despite not having the largest population in Asia, Zhao said the Philippines is more advanced in terms of payments services as well as mobile or smartphone adoption in the region.

He also noted the tech-savvy Filipinos are knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies.

“So the Philippines is a very important hub for Southeast Asia and globally. We do have a fair number of active users in the Philippines already and we would love to be able to provide them with more localized services,” Zhao said.

Zhao recently met with industry stakeholders as well as regulators to know more about the sector in the Philippines.

Binance is looking at the possibility of securing licenses from regulators such as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) that issues licenses to virtual asset services providers (VASP) and electronic money issuers, Zhao said.

So far, the BSP has issued 19 licenses to VASPs as well as 29 EMI licenses to banks and 42 to non-banks.

“In any market there are at least two licenses that we are interested in. There is the VASP license or what we call crypto exchange or crypto license and there is an EMI or the money service license that is more for traditional payments,” he said.

Zhao said Binance is looking at several options such as partnering with an entity with an existing EMI license or other financial technology (fintech) companies.

“So we are looking at applying ourselves or acquiring potential targets and also other type of partnerships that we can use. We are not limited to one approach,” Zhao said.

The world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider is also looking at partnering with existing players in the Philippines.

“We are also interested in investing in traditional financial services sectors, including payment service providers, banks, etc. Again we want to help bring those businesses into the blockchain world,” Zhao said.