Binance France to Close All Accounts by December 31, 2026

Binance France will close all customer accounts on December 31, 2026, and will begin charging monthly maintenance fees on idle balances from November 29, according to notification emails sent to French customers in early November. The shutdown follows the firm's failure to secure authorization under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, ending its regulated presence in one of Europe's largest retail crypto markets.

The fee mechanics deserve attention. Accounts holding a balance after November 29 will pay 0.025% of the account balance per month, with a minimum charge of 10 USDC. The floor, not the percentage, is the binding constraint: at 0.025%, a balance would need to exceed 40,000 USDC before the percentage-based charge surpasses the 10 USDC minimum. For the vast majority of retail accounts, the fee is effectively a flat 10 USDC per month. The charge will be taken in USDC or in whatever other asset the account holds at the cutoff.

What does this change for French customers?

The operative deadline is November 29, not December 31. Deposits are blocked from that date, trading has already ended for French residents, and withdrawals remain the only available function. A customer who waits until the final days of December pays at least one round of maintenance fees for the delay. Users can also close their accounts voluntarily at any point before the December 31 deadline.

The immediate practical stakes belong to French customers with residual balances on the exchange. Their decision window effectively closes on November 29 — the date when leaving starts to cost money rather than the date when accounts formally shut.

How Binance France got here

The closure caps a staged exit that ran throughout 2026. It began with the expiry of Binance France SAS's registration as a Digital Asset Service Provider, the French gatekeeping regime known by its acronym PSAN. MiCA, the EU-wide rulebook, replaces such national regimes with a single license passportable across the bloc.

Binance France's MiCA application did not succeed by the July 1, 2026 transition deadline. The following day, July 2, 2026, the firm was removed from the PSAN list maintained by the AMF, France's financial markets regulator.

From there, regulators — including the AMF and ESMA, the EU's securities markets authority — required an orderly wind-down consistent with MiCA guidelines. Service restrictions then arrived in sequence: spot trading and related products were discontinued earlier in the year, gradually reducing the platform to its current withdrawal-only state.

The wider read-through

For practitioners, the episode is a working example of how the MiCA transition compresses exit timelines. A firm that misses the license deadline loses its national registration almost immediately, and the wind-down that follows strips product lines one by one until only withdrawals remain. The customer-facing consequence is a narrow window between the loss of trading and the onset of custody fees.

French customers holding assets on the platform now face roughly three weeks — until November 29 — to complete withdrawals fee-free before the maintenance charge begins accruing.

By Nathan Brooks