The Binance Pay expansion is not just another product rollout. It is a signal that crypto’s long-awaited use case — everyday payments — might finally be real, at least in South Africa.
In a new integration with Peach Payments and MoneyBadger, Binance is letting South Africans pay for real goods and services online using stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. No gas fees, no volatility, no hoops. Just scan, confirm, and check out. Merchants get paid in Rands the next day.
This partnership is not about hype. It is about infrastructure.
The crypto industry has spent more than a decade making bold claims about disrupting payments. But most efforts have either been speculative, over-engineered or dead on arrival. This Binance Pay expansion is different — it’s quiet, usable, and already live in the real economy.
Larry Cooke of Binance Africa calls it a breakthrough. “Crypto has matured. It’s ready to stand alongside traditional payments,” he says.
If that sounds like marketing, the data says otherwise. MoneyBadger processed over R7.7 million in crypto payments in the first half of 2025 — up 36 percent from the same period in 2024. Peach Payments gives it access to a large and fast-growing ecommerce base, with full merchant settlement in Rands.
This isn’t about niche retailers. The first crypto transactions on the platform were for spades at a suburban hardware store and light fittings at a national lighting chain. These are not “crypto bro” purchases. They’re everyday payments.
Peach Payments head of partnerships Anine de Kock sees it as part of a larger shift. “We’re not selling future potential here,” she says. “This is working now.”
That shift is not happening in isolation. Bitcoin payments in South Africa have already overtaken Visa and Mastercard in total volume — a shift Reframed recently explored as part of crypto’s evolution from hype to infrastructure. With the Binance Pay expansion, that shift is being backed by real systems and merchant-ready rails.
Payments are settled via MoneyBadger’s merchant API, which supports Lightning Network transactions and all major crypto wallets. It plugs into Peach Payments’ ecosystem, which already serves everything from food delivery to travel bookings and cleaning services.
Carel van Wyk, co-founder of MoneyBadger, says Peach was a natural partner. “People aren’t just holding Bitcoin anymore. They’re spending it. And Peach has the merchant base and technical stack to make that easy,” he says.
That convenience matters. Despite growth in ecommerce, payments in South Africa still rely heavily on legacy infrastructure. EFTs are slow. Cards are expensive for merchants. And mobile wallets remain fragmented. Crypto, at least in this model, offers an instant, cost-effective alternative.
To be clear, this isn’t a crypto revolution. It’s more like an infrastructure quietly replacing old pipes — not with ideology, but with convenience.
Binance Pay supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies and is used by over 32,000 merchants globally. Since its launch, it has processed over $230 billion in payments across 300 million transactions. In South Africa, it is not being marketed as the future of money. It is being used like a digital wallet — and that might be exactly why it’s working.
There are still questions to be answered. How will regulators respond? Will larger banks adopt or resist? What happens when crypto volatility returns? But the more interesting question might be this: if crypto finally works this well, do consumers care what powers their payment?
Right now, most don’t. They just want payments that are fast, safe, and accepted.
The Binance Pay expansion shows that crypto can deliver that — not as a headline, but as a transaction.