UK-based payments solutions provider Checkout.com has announced its decision to distance itself from cryptocurrency exchange Binance . Specifically, Checkout.com has terminated its contract with cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and the decision was communicated through two letters sent by Checkout's CEO to Binance in August 2023.

The termination was attributed to concerns regarding regulatory actions and orders in relevant jurisdictions, partner inquiries, and issues with Binance's anti-money laundering, sanctions, and compliance controls. Binance expressed disagreement with the grounds for contract termination and hinted at potential legal action, emphasising its efforts to enhance compliance. Despite this development, Binance assured that its services would remain unaffected by Checkout.com's withdrawal.

The move follows Binance's decision to discontinue its Binance Connect service, which facilitated crypto payments for businesses and was supported by Checkout.com. This service change reportedly had minimal user engagement and transactions. Checkout.com, which had been processing hundreds of millions of dollars in Binance transactions according to Forbes, joins a growing list of payment providers distancing themselves from Binance due to investigations across multiple countries.

This includes fraud and money laundering charges from US agencies and regulatory pressures. European payments provider PaySafe had previously ceased collaboration with Binance in June 2023. According to Forbes, despite the initial success of the partnership between the two entities, friction arose when Binance launched Checkout.com's platform without implementing certain security measures.

This led to fraudulent transactions and financial losses. Despite these challenges, Checkout.com remained committed to the partnership as Binance became its largest customer, although digital asset transactions comprised only a small fraction of Checkout's total processing volumes. Other developments from Checkout.com In 2023, Checkout.com has entered several new partnerships and launched its Identity Verification system.

In August 2023, payments orchestration platform WLPayments has partnered with Checkout.com. Through this partnership, the two companies looked to improve the payments ecosystem by providing new benefits to clients such as online merchants, acquirers, PSPs, EMIs, and ISOs. Designed to meet the needs of both small and large businesses, the payment orchestration platform of WLPayments relies on a microservices architecture approach to help companies in their scaling efforts while keeping up with emerging market trends and developments.

In July 2023, Checkout.com launched Identity Verification to improve customer onboarding and to prevent fraudulent activities. The new service uses an identity verification process that leveraged proprietary AI trained on data points that are labelled by advanced ID fraud experts. The solution uses video and artificial intelligence processing in order to capture the ID document and to verify a short video of the individual in 25fps, 1000 images/flow.

Customers are set to be verified in a couple of minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while the product is set to be available in multiple countries around the globe. .