Topic: Reviews: How to buy Bitcoin for low price and few fees with card or paypal (Read 535 times)

Apart from all that you can also buy bitcoin with PayPal or credit card from the following sites which are:

1. XCoins.io (credit card and PayPal)
2. Coinfy.com (credit card only)
3. IQOption.com (credit card only)
4. VirWox.com (credit card and PayPal)
5. PaxFul.com (credit card and PayPal)
6. LocalBitcoins.com (credit card and PayPal)

Great list, and very comprehensive. This deserves at least a couple of merits.

I think this is very helpful not only to newbies but also to all of us here. Not only a couple of times have I encountered someone here who was asking how and where to buy Bitcoin using a card. This is enough information for some members here looking for such information. Great job! I hope the updates are regular and timely.

The best place to buy Bitcoin with Paypal is right here. However, you really need to have a long standing account with trading history or no one will want to trade. I buy them from here because I can usually get 1 to 1 rates in the currency exchange section. There's no better place to get it than right here. Personally, I think Coinbases fees are extremely high. I've seen other people pay almost 30% in fees from it. I've never used it for that reason.

Thank you for this very informative post.
Have you considered CashApp as well? It seems like many people use it but I am not sure how it works as far as BTC.

I am hearing in this thread also that CoinBase is good for USA and Kraken for Europe.
A suggestion could be to add supported geographical regions that an exchange supports. I found that to be the main roadblock when I started looking for an exchange. Some would sell in Canada and some wouldn't or would make it very difficult to buy as a Canadian.

buy.bitcoin.com


I recently noticed that you can buy Bitcoin (Core) on bitcoin.com and even if I don't agree with Bitcoin Cash madness marketing it looks like it is a valid option for buying normal Bitcoin.

Review for Buy.bitcoin.com added to first post.

Hello,

Thank you for your input. The fee's seem to be ok.

Exchange Rate Buy/Sell Bitcoin 1%
Deposit Bank Transfer 2.5%
Outgoing Bitcoin Variable (dependent on Network congestion)

https://www.coincorner.com/Fees

But what is this?

https://www.coincorner.com/BitcoinPrice

Currently £7012

But thats way higher then the general price

https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+price+gbp

1 Bitcoin equals 6,377.92 British Pound

https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/bitcoin/gbp

1 BTC = £6,342


So on coincorner you have ~600 GBP added to the price of 1 bitcoin.

Sounds like a scam to me.

Hi there,

CoinCorner is a UK bitcoin exchange which is very friendly toward beginners. It's been in operation since 2014 and is trusted by customers worldwide.

Here are some basics about CoinCorner:

- Registration is simple and only takes a few minutes, https://www.coincorner.com/
- New users can make deposits under £100/€100 without the need to upload I.D. documents (good opportunity to easily try out the process)
- 47 countries are supported
- Various payment methods are accepted, incl. debit/credit card, SEPA or bank transfer, and Neteller
- Friendly customer support team available to answer any queries
- Stack of customer support resources available here, https://support.coincorner.com/hc/en-us,  which answer FAQs/popular queries
- Web wallet services are also available via Android/iOS, meaning that users can access their bitcoin wallets and make transactions while on the move!

Hope this is useful!

First post updated with Coinmama and Bitpanda. Sadly neither is a very cost effective option.

Hi Brian,

This is exactly what I am talking about. It is too hard to buy for normal people and there's too little info available. Too many take advantage of it and charge too much. We need to sort out who is who and what they charge.

I will look into revolut when I have some time and see what they offer.

Thank you very much for your input!


Update: According to the information on Revolut web site they only charge a flat 1.5% fee.

https://www.revolut.com/cryptocurrency?lang=en

But this is a dealbraker:

https://www.revolut.com/es/cryptocurrency-terms?lang=en

5.3. External transfers of cryptocurrency will not be permitted (please see clause 6 for further details).

...

6.3. You will not be able to transfer any cryptocurrency held outside of a Revolut Account into a Revolut Account.

6.4. You will not be able to transfer cryptocurrency exposure held as part of the Crypto Services to other cryptocurrency wallets held outside of the Mobile App (for example transferring your BTC exposure to other bitcoin wallets).

6.5. Your cryptocurrency exposure balance will first be converted into fiat if you wish to transfer your cryptocurrency exposure externally.


Because of this I do NOT recommend Revolut to buy crypto. They don't give you access to the actual coins. Even if the price is good they are not really selling you anything.

Excellent thread, as a newbie, I'm also looking for an easy way to buy Bitcoin. 
A few of my work colleagues Are using a phone app, Revolut, Which seems to be fast and easy.
I'm using eToro which uses PayPal but although they say you own the coins, you do not have a wallet or access to them, you can only buy or sell them using the eToro platform.
I have sent some Fiat to Kraken via swift but after two weeks it still hasn't arrived so have opened up a support ticket with them. I can't seem to transfer money to coinbase using my debit card, bank says its not them but the transfer still gets refused so I have given up with coinbase.
I have just signed up with Binance but they only accept coin.
As someone who is not used to transferring money between banks or overseas, this can be a little confusing and it has put a few of my friends off.
I'm enjoying my experience with crypto so far but so far havn't been able to buy any actual coins!!

Brian

Personally I like the service and performance of Bitstamp better, but I agree that both Kraken and Coinbase are serious companies backed by real people.




Its not a new idea I am trying to promote. I am requesting help with finding solutions for existing friends and clients of mine. They ask me how they can buy bitcoin with credit card or paypal, I try to find a solution. Your comment: "You should not..." This thread is for those that are looking for an option that accepts credit cards and other solutions. What your personal opinion is regarding if credit card is the best option or not is welcome but irrelevant. By the way, it is not necessary to quote the whole first post.

Thank you for your observation regarding the long deposit time buying with credit card on Coinbase. For what I have learned the delay in crediting deposits was due to a massive a mount of new users registering this holiday season and as far as I have heard it is much faster now. But I agree that a week is not acceptable under any circumstances.

Thanks, i believe kraken is the best solution for eu, coinbase for usa.
Both legit and caked by serious ppl who will not let this fail.

First post updated with Kraken and Spectrocoin reviews

Hi, and thank you for posting!

I will look into Cryptopia, I know that it is a NZ exchange that has a lot of coins, but I dont know what deposit or buy options they have, yet.

Regarding Coinbase being a good alternative for trading, it is not. Gdax is a better alternative or any other exchange. But its is neither really relevant to me in this matter if it is a good service to trade on or not, what I am focusing on is if it is a good, reliable and relatively cheap place to buy bitcoin for beginners. The bitcoins can be transferred to another exchange or be used as a payment method, or maybe just to save for the future. Whatever the motive is.

Feel free to post more tips or personal experiences!

I will continue to update first post when I add new info.


Update: Cryptopia does not accept FIAT deposits, nor do they accept purchases with Credit Card, PayPal or any other service like that. As far as I can see they only accept deposits in bitcoin and altcoins.

this is a very thorough look

I would never recommend coinbase to anyone for getting the coin at startup unless they are not concerned about the short term trading.

I have friends who use cryptopia to buy in and swear by it.  I have not personal experience there, but am told it's cheaper than Coinbase.

Also, I have acquaintances who buy their coin privately to not involve a bank at all.  This is about a 10% fee on the coin they buy, but they remain more anonymous this way.

Each may have their drawbacks when it comes to fees, but while a fee is a worry, the gain is likely the goal - so if

First post updated

I guess the question should really be:

Where can I buy bitcoin for a price closest to the global market price with as little fees as possible, counting funding/deposit fees and any other fee as well as the actual exchange fee?

Preferably with a Credit Card, PayPal, Skrill or any other service that people not necessarily involved in the crypto world (yet) can use easily and with low costs.



I am often asked by clients or friends where they can buy bitcoin and my explications usually lead to them not buying because its "too complicated" or "takes too long time", or is "too expensive". Plus the trust issue. How can you know its not a scam? So I am looking for a trusted place where I, or anybody I know, could simply buy Bitcoins with their credit card without having to wait for ages and without paying overprice and high fees. I searched before posting and I did find an old thread here in the forum, but I must say there where not too many suggestions and it looked dead so I decided to create a new topic.

We can easily deduct that the cheapest option is to send a bank transfer to a proper crypto exchange and buy manually on the market. But we are trying to find alternatives to this that will not cost too much in this thread. Bank transfers take a long time. People do not want to wait.

What I have noticed so far is that as long as the site / service / wallet / exchange you can use has all fees clearly displayed it is possible to compare. But some and actually most sites do not display all the fees. They might not display the fees until right before a transaction is going to be confirmed by you, and in some cases not at all. This makes it harder to compare different services.


It is usually very confusing.

There are a lot of crypto exchanges and more popping up every month. Some accept deposits or funding in fiat currencies like usd or eur, but most require you to fund with crypto currencies.

Established exchanges like Poloniex, Kraken etc have 0.15-0.16% vs 0.25-0.26% on each trade depending on if you are the maker or the taker and that is cheap, but you need to fund your account first and there is usually some kind of fee involved for that too of course depending on your method.

I found one article where you can see some fees  https://99bitcoins.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin-with-a-credit-card/
The services reviewed in that article all have fees from ~ 4 to 10% or higher/unclear. And it is unclear if it is really up to date.

The goal with creating this thread is to facilitate the purchase of bitcoin, and other crypto currencies, for beginners and people not yet used to how exchanges work but would like to buy some crypto currency for one reason or the other.

I would love to hear your experiences, opinions and suggestions! From both experienced users and beginners.





Reviews

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Bitstamp

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No
Bank deposit: Yes
Requires verification: Yes
Fee info: https://www.bitstamp.net/fee_schedule/
Fee: 5%

Bitstamp allows you to buy several cryptos directly with credit or debit card. First you need to register and get verified, then you can buy up to a certain amount.
The cost/fee is approximately 5%. Plus, if any, fee your card issuer charges.

For example, in the moment of making this review, value of 1 BTC on Bitstamp exchange is 9585 (euro) but you would have to pay 10100 (euro) to buy 1 BTC with your credit card.

https://www.bitstamp.net/account/deposit/credit-card/

PURCHASE LIMITS (verified account)
Daily: EUR 5000
Monthly: EUR 20000

Your card needs to be 3D Secure compliant.


I recommend this option simply because Bitstamp is a trusted exchange and have been around for a long time. The fee for paying with a card is too high for this option to be perfect though. The verification process might also be slow during times with a lot of new signups but they are usually quite fast.

It is much cheaper to transfer fiat to Bitstamp from your bank and then buy the crypto directly on their exchange then buying it with a card. This requires some minimal technical experience though. Nothing out of the ordinary. Deposits are relatively fast and should be credited in little over 24 hours under normal circumstances.

I have read articles and forum posts regarding users complaining that Bitstamp are demanding all kinds of verification for withdrawals, and that can put you off, but the BTC transaction fee for outgoing transfers is relatively low so you can easily transfer away your BTC and withdraw from a more friendly option. I dont think they demand extra verification from all and any users, but probably in some selected cases, and the requirements they seems to have can appear ridiculous. Still this is most likely coming from trying to comply with laws and regulations in order to stay out of trouble. And this I guess that in the longrun is appreciated by me as a user.

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Coinbase

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No (as withdrawal method only)
Bank deposit: Yes
Requires verification: Yes
Fee info: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/2109597-buy-sell-bank-transfer-fees
Fee: 3.99% + High rate

Coinbase allows you to fund your account with a credit or debit card. Their web page inform me that they have a 3,99% transaction fee on funding your account with your Credit/Debit card. Plus, if any, fee your card issuer charges.
The fee for withdrawing to PayPal is also 3.99% according to their fee disclosure.
The purchase limit is dynamic and depends but a typical starting limit would be 750 € / $1000 per week for a newly verified account.
It irritates me that I have to "connect" a card as payment method before I can see the actual prices that I have to pay with it. Coinbase are professionals but very sneaky. Not transparent enough.
Bitcoin price can also be more expensive on Coinbase then on for example their own exchange Gdax, and that can make your purchase more expensive then necessary.

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Kraken

Credit Card: No
PayPal: No
Bank deposit: Yes
Requires verification: Yes
Fees: https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/201396777-What-are-the-deposit-fees-
Fee: 0.25-0.26% (Trading fee. Deposit is free but only bank deposit is available)

Kraken have excellent to reasonable fees (SEPA deposit is free) and since their recent update the site can be used without problems. They accept bank transfers (SEPA, Wire transfer or SWIFT) as fiat funding options but they do not have funding with credit card available or any other option apart from depositing crypto directly. Withdrawals are known to be processed fast, plus the fee is low for SEPA withdrawals.
Kraken are professionals and have good intentions but be warned that when they had some issues with their site their support was slow and site buggy in 2017. They did upgrade their trading engine recently and some improvements have been made. Everything seems to work better in 2018.

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Spectrocoin

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No
Skrill: Yes
Bank deposit: Yes
Requires verification: Yes
Fee info: https://spectrocoin.com/en/fees-and-limits.html
Fee: 5.83% + 3.5-6%

Spectrocoin is by far one of the merchants that offer the most options of the alternatives I have encountered. They have a massive amount of deposit options depending on your location. Credit Card, Skrill and other options are available. They do require verification at some point. Unfortunately the fees are high on all options except bank deposits (SEPA). The fee schedule above does not display all the fees but I have been able to figure them out by using their site.

Credit Card 5,83% Plus, if any, fee your card issuer charges.
SEPA 0%
Neteller 5,27%
Perfect Money 7,53%
Payeer 25%
Skrill 5,27%


If you scroll down a little here you see all the available funding options https://spectrocoin.com/en/bitcoin-exchange.html

The sad thing is that I have had some rather negative experiences with their support team and their overall attitude towards clients. This is reflected in the negative reviews in this forum. That said, it is a solid service in the sense that it is not a scam, it works and as long as you don't have to contact support and you don't use it as your main wallet you will usually not have any problems.
The whole thing with not displaying fees is typical Spectrocoin. Its a shady company but they are slowly getting better.

I warn you that buying bitcoin on Spectrocoin is more expensive then the market price. Their own price is calculated by their "secret formula" and that is approximately an additional 3.5 - 6% depending on when you buy. So in combination with the deposit fee it might be an expensive solution for you. You can just as well buy on Bitstamp where the price is lower and fee fixed. But if you need to fund with Skrill or Payeer or any other of the options available this is an alternative for you that works.

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Coinmama

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No
Bank deposit: No
Requires verification: Yes
Fee info: https://www.coinmama.com/faq (What are the fees?)
Fee: 5.50% + 5% + ?

"Coinmama is a cryptocurrency exchange that was formed in 2013. Coinmama is registered in Slovakia but is owned by New Bit Ventures Limited that is headquartered in Israel. It operates in 217 countries worldwide, and is available in 24 US States. It provides users with a platform to purchase Bitcoin and Ethereum using credit and debit cards, or through Western Union."

Coinmama review: https://blockonomi.com/coinmama-review/

I have no personal experience with Coinmama but from reading comments, reviews and their FAQ I can deduct that they give you the crypto currency fast and are reliable, that they require verification and that they are quite expensive. What doesnt convince me are the high fees.
From the Coinmama FAQ:

"The price you see on our website is Coinmama's bitcoin rate and includes our fee of 5.50%."
"For credit/debit card transactions, the payment processor charges 5.00% additional fee. This fee will be added after choosing your method of payment. Apart from our fees, your bank may incur their own."

5.50% + 5% + ? = Too much. This makes Coinmama a safe and fast, but expensive option.

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Bitpanda

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No
Bank deposit: No
Skrill: Yes
Requires verification: Yes
Fee info: https://support.bitpanda.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002599605-What-fees-can-I-expect-to-pay-
Fee: 5% + 1-4% + ?

I have no personal experience with Bitpanda but they are well known and reliable.
Here is a review with more info: https://www.finder.com/bitpanda-review

Information gathered from their help section or reviews.

You can choose from the following options:

Mastercard
Visa
Sofort
EPS
Giropay
Neteller
Skrill
SEPA transfer


What fees can I expect to pay?

On the following pages you can check for yourself, how much you would actually get:

bitpanda.com/trades/buy
bitpanda.com/trades/sell

Unfortunately the third parties involved (e.g. your payment provider) have certain fees which can't be avoided.
However, we do guarantee you the amount you see on the order confirmation page.

In conclusion the fees seem to be the following:

Deposit fees: 5%
Fiat-to-crypto trades: 1.00% - 4.00%

5% + 1-4% + ? = Too much. So in the end it is a somewhat expensive option and again... you might as well use Bitstamp.

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Buy.bitcoin.com

Credit Card: Yes
PayPal: No
Bank deposit: No
Requires verification: Yes in some cases, but not always.
Fee info: https://support.bitpanda.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002599605-What-fees-can-I-expect-to-pay-
Fee: 2.5% + 5% + rate 1-2% = 8.5-9.5%


You can buy Bitcoin (Core) on bitcoin.com with a credit or debit card:

https://buy.bitcoin.com/

Click "Buy Bitcoin Core with credit card"

The service requires that the user already have a bitcoin wallet and knows his/hers address.
The fee's are displayed under the purchase box.

Please note that additional fees will be charged, on top of the above Bitcoin / $ rate at checkout.

Those fees are as follows:

- Bitcoin.com 2.5%
- Credit card processing by Simplex 5% ($10 minimum)



The actual bitcoin price is also slightly higher then the general index price.

At the moment of writing:

buy.bitcoin.com price

1 BTC = 9066.26

Index price

1 Bitcoin equals 8914.99 US Dollar

This is less then 2% over index and acceptable.



Regarding verification the web sites states:

If your transaction is still pending, it might be because you have yet to submit to a verification request. In such cases, an email is sent asking for proof of identity or card ownership



In conclusion the fees seem to be the following:

Bitcoin.com 2.5% + payment gateway 5% (min $10) + bitcoin rate 1-2% = 8.5-9.5% and that is too much over all compared to other options.

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Last updated 23 April 2018