Binance sign-up guide: opening an account that can actually earn

Why an account is step one if you want coins to earn

Every yield product this site covers — flexible savings, fixed terms, staking, Dual Investment, Launchpool — needs an account before you can touch it. Not because exchanges are wonderful, but because one interface bundles four jobs together: custody, converting, subscribing and redeeming. You don't manage private keys, don't pay gas, don't have to tell a real contract address from a fake one. For someone earning yield on crypto for the first time, that layer of convenience matters.

You can of course earn on-chain instead, and there are even more routes there. The difference is that the barrier and the cost of a mistake aren't in the same league:

Comparison	Exchange account	On-chain wallet / DeFi
Who holds your coins	The exchange	You (private key, seed phrase)
Barrier to entry	Register + verify identity	Create a wallet, buy gas, vet contracts
Cost of a slip	Support can usually chase it	A wrong address is basically gone
Main risk	Platform credit risk	Lost keys + smart contract risk
Getting money in	Fiat on-ramp or a coin deposit	You need coins from somewhere else first

So for most people step one lands on an exchange — it pushes the cost of "I want to start" as low as it goes. Once you have more money in play and you're comfortable with on-chain tools, you can move a slice out there; that's a later chapter. For where each of the five yield types gets its yield from and which carries more risk, see Crypto earn basics: 5 yield product types and the risk spectrum.

There's a practical reason too: the account is a one-off cost. Registering and verifying takes effort exactly once, and after that subscribing, redeeming and switching products never repeat it. So even if you only plan to test the water with a couple of hundred USDT, it's worth doing this step properly — especially the security settings further down.

Five things to have ready before you start

You don't need much, but missing any one of them means stopping halfway through, which is more annoying than preparing.

1. An email address you'll keep receiving mail at long-term. Not a work address, and not a disposable one. Every security notice, unusual-login alert and balance-change notification goes there, and changing jobs or letting the address lapse leaves you stuck. If you can, open one used only for exchanges — it's the calmest option.
2. A phone number you actually use. It's for SMS verification and some security operations. Don't use a number you're about to cancel.
3. A strong, dedicated password. The key word is dedicated — don't reuse the one from your email or social accounts. When accounts like this get taken over, it's often not the exchange being breached but a password leaked elsewhere being replayed against you. Generate a random one in a password manager; not being able to remember it yourself is the safer outcome.
4. An unexpired original ID document. A national ID card or passport — you'll photograph it at the verification step. Check the expiry date first; that's the number-one reason for rejection.
5. A phone with an authenticator app installed. Google Authenticator or similar is fine. You'll use it to bind two-factor authentication as soon as the account is open, so installing it now saves a round trip.

One more thing that isn't preparation but is worth settling first: how much you intend to put in. That number shapes whether you choose flexible or fixed later, and whether to split across two platforms. If you can't decide, start with an amount you could lose without it affecting your life, run the flow once, and add later.

Registering: which step the invite code goes in

Registration itself is short — usually a few minutes end to end. The order goes roughly like this:

1. Open the official sign-up page. You can register in the mobile app or on the web; the interfaces differ slightly, the flow is the same. Binance's official sign-up page is this site's entry point carrying invite code BNB2628.
2. Pick how you register: email or phone number, one of the two. You can add the other one later in the security settings, giving you an extra recovery route.
3. Set a password. Use the dedicated one you prepared earlier.
4. Find the "invite code / referral code" field. It's sometimes collapsed by default, and you need to tap a small "enter invite code" line to expand it. If you came through the coded link above, the field will usually be pre-filled with BNB2628 — just check it; if you're registering manually, type it in yourself.
5. Get the verification code. A string of digits arrives by email or SMS; enter it to complete verification.
6. Land on the account dashboard. At this point the account exists, but you still can't do much — identity verification is the next gate.

Disclosure: the link above is this site's promotional link. If you register through it, the price you pay is not increased as a result. This site is an independently run information site, not Binance's official website. Our stated terms are a fee discount of up to 20%; whether it applies and what the actual rate is follow Binance's current rules and what your account page shows.

One point about the invite code deserves its own paragraph: it isn't a required field, but you often can't add it afterwards. Leave it blank at sign-up and the account still gets created — the referral relationship is simply settled at that moment. Benefits like this are usually written into the account's attributes the instant you register, and trying to fill it in later mostly gets you a "registered users cannot modify this" message. So even if you haven't decided whether you'll use it, filling it in costs you nothing — it doesn't make you pay a cent more.

Identity verification: shooting an ID that won't be rejected

Identity verification (what people call KYC) is the step most likely to stall the whole account-opening flow — not because it's hard, but because photos keep coming back as unacceptable, and after a few reuploads people get fed up.

First, why you can't skip it. Major exchanges now place identity verification very early, and withdrawals, fiat deposits and withdrawals, and quite a few earn products all require the account to be verified first. You can browse the interface and look at product lists unverified, but if you actually want to put money in and earn interest, this gate has to be cleared. Exactly which features are gated and at which tier varies by platform and gets adjusted, so follow Binance's current rules and the prompts on your own account page — we don't hard-code that here.

Verification generally involves two things: uploading photos of your document and taking a liveness selfie. The first is photographing the front and back clearly; the second lets the camera confirm the person photographing is you, usually by asking you to turn your head, blink or read out a string of digits.

For the photos, follow these and you'll usually pass first time:

• The document must be within its validity period. Expired ones are simply not accepted — the most common cause of failure.
• All four corners must be in frame. A tilted shot, a clipped corner or an edge running off the frame can all be judged incomplete.
• No glare, no blur. Turn off the flash, find somewhere with even light (natural light by a window works best), and zoom in on the result yourself to check that the document number and name are perfectly legible.
• Don't let a finger sit on the information. Plenty of people hold the document steady and cover the document number with a thumb.
• Shoot the original — not a photocopy, and not a screen. The system is very sensitive to screen moiré and black-and-white photocopies.
• What you type must match the document character for character. Name, date of birth, document number — one character off and it comes back. Watch spaces in names and unusual character forms.

The liveness selfie works the same way: enough light, glasses, mask and hat off, follow the prompted movements, and don't switch away to take a call mid-flow. Then you wait for review, with the current status shown on the page. We won't pin down how long review takes — that time swings a lot with the queue, so go by the status shown on your own account page rather than treating someone else's experience as the benchmark.

Don't panic if it's rejected. The system generally gives a rough reason for the failure; fix that and reupload. The number of retries is usually enough. If several attempts genuinely fail, go through official support channels — don't go searching for those "verification-for-hire" services. Handing your ID documents to a stranger is far worse than failing verification.

The security settings to do the day you open the account

This section matters especially for readers of this site, because you're here to earn over the long haul. People who trade short-term log in daily and spot anything odd quickly; whereas once coins go into flexible savings or a fixed term, many people don't glance at the account for months. That unattended stretch is exactly when the security settings are doing real work for you.

Three settings will block most of the common trouble:

1. Two-factor authentication (2FA)

Bind an authenticator app in the security settings. It generates a fresh string of digits every 30 seconds, required both to log in and to withdraw, so someone holding only your password can't get in. It's worth binding before SMS codes — SMS carries hijacking and SIM-swap risk.

During binding you'll be given a backup key or a set of recovery codes. Write that down — on paper — and keep it somewhere you'll find it. Lose the phone, reinstall the system, wipe the app's data, and that string is your only lifeline. Don't just screenshot it onto the same phone: when the phone goes, so does the screenshot.

2. Anti-phishing code

This one is badly underrated. You set a short string only you know, and from then on every official email the exchange sends you carries it. An email without that string is fake, no matter how official it looks.

Phishing emails are one of the main entry points for accounts like this getting drained, and the subject lines tend to be the panic-inducing kind: "unusual login, verify immediately," "your account is about to be frozen." Once the anti-phishing code is set, telling real from fake is a single glance for that string — no need to pick apart sender domains. Set it once, good indefinitely.

3. Withdrawal address whitelist

In withdrawal address management, turn on the whitelist (some interfaces call it address book restriction), add your own wallet addresses, and then allow withdrawals only to whitelisted addresses. That way, even if someone gets into the account, coins can only leave to your own addresses.

While you're there, look out for any "withdrawal without verification" convenience option — that kind of switch, which skips two-factor to save a step, is pure risk for an account you rarely log into, so turn it off. Adding a whitelist address usually carries a delay before it takes effect; that delay isn't an inconvenience, it's a protection that buys you reaction time.

Beyond those three, two more are easy to do while you're in there: first, check the logged-in device list under device management and kick out anything you don't recognize; second, don't enable the API if you don't use it — and if you created a key to run some tool, restrict it by IP and don't grant withdrawal permission.

Once the account is ready, where the first money goes

Verification is through and the security settings are done, so next comes getting coins into the account and subscribing to a product.

There are two common routes to getting coins: buying directly with fiat (buying a stablecoin such as USDT through the exchange's fiat or P2P entry), or depositing coins from somewhere else. One suggestion for your first time: send a very small amount first to prove the route works, confirm it arrived, and only then send the larger amount. Choosing the right chain matters especially on cross-chain deposits — recovering coins sent on the wrong chain is a lot of trouble, and the cost of that small test transfer is far below the cost of getting it wrong.

Once the coins land, you can move into earn products. Pick by your situation:

• No idea where to start and just want to run the flow → begin with Your first deposit: how to start with 100 USDT and walk the whole chain with a small amount.
• Want the specifics of flexible and fixed terms → read Binance Simple Earn: how to use flexible and fixed-term savings, which covers the entry path, subscribing, interest accrual and redemption.
• Torn over which tier this money belongs in → read Flexible vs fixed vs staking: where to put it, which measures all three against liquidity, APY and risk.
• Wondering when the money actually starts earning → read How interest is calculated and when it arrives, which answers the "why do earnings show 0 today" question.

A word on OKX as well. This site's OKX invite code is OK2628, and the sign-up flow is much like the one above — the same four steps of register, enter the code, verify identity and do the security settings, just with different names in the interface. Its yield products sit in the "Earn" channel, which holds Simple Earn, on-chain Earn and Dual Investment side by side even though they're very different in nature, so before you touch them it's worth reading OKX Earn: flexible, fixed and on-chain Earn to tell the three apart. As for which of the two to pick, or whether to open both, Binance vs OKX: which Earn fits you better compares them item by item. One account is entirely enough to start with — get fluent with one before adding another.

Three risks to state up front

You're opening the account in order to earn, so the boundaries of earning itself need spelling out before you put money in.

First, exchange earn products are not bank deposits and are not principal-protected. Putting coins into flexible savings or a fixed term is, at its core, lending them out for a slice of interest while carrying the platform's credit risk. There's no deposit insurance here, and if the platform really runs into trouble, your money may not come back intact. We pull those details apart in more depth in Is exchange Earn safe? Will you lose money, what if the platform blows up — worth finishing before you deposit.

Second, the flexible APY floats and the platform adjusts it whenever. The number you see today is a reference value computed from current supply and demand in the lending pool, not a promise to you. When the market is hot, borrowing demand runs high and the rate spikes; when things go quiet it falls back. So don't take a screenshot from one moment and extrapolate a year's earnings — that arithmetic doesn't hold from the start. On how to read these rate figures, What's the difference between APY and APR covers part of it.

Third, fixed terms have a lock-up and leaving early has a cost. Money locked in can't be taken out during the term, or can be exited early at the price of giving up the interest for that period. Before subscribing, think through whether you'll need this money during the lock-up — don't box yourself in for an extra point or two of APY. And for products showing absurdly high rates, on any platform, ask first: where is this yield supposed to come from? Why high APYs deserve the most caution is about exactly that question.