I can see alot of people suggesting Paxful for OP but the truth is that irrespective of the platform you trade, you run the risk of getting scammed if you fail to abide strictly by the rules sets by the administrators of the platform. I have seen people get scammed on Paxful despite the various protective measures put in place and the simple reason for that is not following the rule. I seen situations where people who felt the charges from Paxful is too much, or they felt they could get a better deal by having the discussion outside Paxful such as WhatsApp so they have a good deal, some would even be scoped to inform Paxful escrow to release the coins claiming fiat transfer is due to network among all issues. So, my advise is you should stick to the rule and you will be fine.
On Vertex for example, there is no communication at all between the two parties. A chat just makes things more complicated. We know that from over 10 years of OTC trading experience, of course not just crypto.
Let us take PayPal as example. we do only allow a BUYER to use a paypal account he verified that he also has access to its email address. reducing the risk of "dispute: i have not made transaction". Then the BUYER is asked to put a reference code to the payment instrcution and ONLY SEND AS A FRIEND (also to avoid ridiculous fees of PayPal).
Now the seller, upon confirming that he received the funds has to confirm that
a) the account the money is coming from is the one we tell him it should be coming from
b) the buyer has put the reference code
c) has sent as a friend (not always available)
if a) and b) are not met, the seller should just refund the money and not confirm he received it. so simple, yet some users might then ignore our advise and go ahead.
In general, it is much better to use bank transfers. We have not experienced a single scam attempt with bank wires, not saying it wouldn't be possible.