Trying to corner local markets, the Malta-based crypto exchange Binance has added support for 15 more fiat currencies through the integration with Simplex.

Gateways for currencies like the Korean won, the Swiss franc, the Polish zloty, the South African rand and the Australian dollar have been created and made available through the exchange’s fiat-to-crypto trading facility. The Russian ruble and the pound sterling are now Simplex supported too. The integration was confirmed by developers to be fully operational until Thursday in the afternoon.

The supported fiat currencies are going to be paired with the base cryptocurrencies on Binance, which are the assets used by the exchange for default trading pairs. These cryptocurrencies include the Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and XRP, while the fiat currencies include the US dollar and even the Nigerian naira.

It seems that fiat volumes are not that significant for the trading activity on Binance, seeing from a daily volume of about $3.5 billion, $3.5 million is fiat. Most of this volume is in US dollars since a gateway for this currency became open. As Binance is folding some of the currencies it supports into US dollars, it’s still not sure if end-users are the ones who generated the exchange’s dollar volume.

Simplex and Binance have become partners in January 2019. They allow users to buy crypto using their debit and credit cards in either euros, Canadian dollars, US dollars and Japanese yens. While the fee charged is 3% plus $10 on purchases under $200, it’s still cheaper than the card or bank providers’ transactions, which levy a 3% FX fee aside from the usual fiat-crypto swap fees. By encouraging users to make trades in their local currency, Binance is becoming more global.

In October 2019, the company’s CEO Changpeng Zhao said Binance integrated the Russian ruble because Russia was representing one of the key markers for the exchange. Thursday, the firm hired a product lead that used to work for Uber in order to expand its services to local markets.

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