Binance has stopped processing transactions involving MEXC and its affiliates after the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) designated MEXC a primary money laundering concern.

Effective immediately, requests to send funds from Binance accounts to MEXC will be declined. Deposits received from MEXC will be temporarily withheld for compliance review, and affected users could face further restrictions, including being offboarded from Binance.

“Effective immediately, users should not send funds to, receive funds from, or otherwise transact through Binance involving MEXC, MEXC Global, MEXC affiliates or related entities,” Binance said on X on Tuesday. Binance also published the restriction in an official announcement.

The exchange said it is applying enhanced compliance measures following FinCEN's designation of MEXC as a Primary Money Laundering Concern. Binance's announcement lists 13 entities covered by the restriction, including MEXC Global Limited, MEXC Estonia OÜ and MEXC Singapore Pte Ltd — a scope spanning multiple registered entities across the MEXC group.

MEXC is one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It ranked ninth among spot exchanges on CoinMarketCap, which evaluates platforms based on traffic, liquidity and trading volume, with approximately $812.5 million in spot trading volume over the previous 24 hours. Binance ranked first, with approximately $6.4 billion — putting the restriction between two of the top ten spot venues by that ranking.

FinCEN's action

FinCEN named MEXC a primary money laundering concern last Friday in connection with Russian illicit finance. The order, issued under the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, bars U.S. financial institutions from processing fund transfers involving the exchange. Binance's restrictions were announced within days of that designation, and the prohibition it responds to reaches beyond any single platform's own policy to U.S. financial institutions as a whole.

FinCEN alleges that MEXC processed at least $16 billion in suspicious transactions between May 2021 and May 2026. That total included nearly $1.5 billion in direct and indirect exposure to Russian sanctions evasion, according to the agency, which described MEXC's anti-money laundering controls as severely deficient. The FinCEN order takes effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register — the point at which the bar on U.S. financial institutions processing MEXC-related fund transfers formally comes into force.

Binance is not the only exchange to respond. OKX has also warned users against transferring funds to MEXC, Finance Magnates reported. From here, the markers to watch are the order's effective date, 30 days after its Federal Register publication, and how deposits withheld under Binance's compliance review are resolved for affected users.