Ripple CTO Weighs In on Binance's Rift with Barclays

David Schwartz, Ripple's chief technology officer, has shared his take on U.K. banking giant Barclays blocking cardholders from sending payments to the Binance exchange to “protect” its customers.            

The mastermind behind the XRP Ledger suggests that financial institutions should be prohibited from arbitrarily refusing transactions “without appeal.”

The simplest patch, though by far not a fix, is to prohibit financial institutions from refusing transactions or customers arbitrarily and without appeal. If the government is going to force us to use FIs, they also have to force FIs to serve us.

— Ｄａｖｉｄ Ｓｃｈｗａｒｔｚ (@JoelKatz) July 6, 2021

As reported by U.Today, Barclays informed its customers that credit/debit card payments to Binance were blocked “until further notice” due to the Financial Conduct Authority’s recent warning about one of the company’s entities not being allowed to conduct any regulated activity in the U.K.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, described the decision as “disappointing” in its recent statement.                  

Schwartz claims that governments make it “very difficult” to avoid financial intermediaries.

Hence, he doesn’t believe that Barclays is at fault:  

It is not the bank's fault. They would prefer not to have this responsibility. It's the government that makes them responsible that forces them to have absurd policies.