Topic: UK ATM Fee question (Read 124 times)

As jackg mentioned, it would probably be best if you used an online exchange. You are not going to incur as high of fees as you will via an ATM.

When dealing with smaller amounts, you are almost always going to be paying an outsized fee due to fixed transaction costs associated with each transaction, such as the TX fee (paid to the miners) and the cost of using the machine. On top of that, you will likely pay a premium as a percentage to the ATM operator.

Thanks all for taking the time to reply, I might give it another try, there is another in the area, only two though. Possibly ran by the same person.

Still not had a response, all part of the learning curve, I am only dabbling at the moment with nothing specific in mind just to learn a few things.

We're talking about a buying fee around 45 % which should be classified as a felony... Next time you should pay higher attention to the screen that appears just before you confirm the transaction. Sadly it seems that only one BATM in UK reports the buying fee[1] - 12 % - but it's still far away from the one that you were hit with. From what I could see on coinatmradar.com most of the BATM that exist in the UK are from General Bytes[2] and while the fees that are employed in the transactions are chosen by whoever buys the equipment from them, you should try to find the one that offers the lowest value. Assuming that the interface hasn't changed much, I found a video tutorial[3] regarding buying BTC in a BATM that uses a machine made by General Bytes that may help you understand where these machines grab their profit. If you look at one of the early shots of the video you'll see this screen:



In it the machine claims that the buy exchange rate of 1 BTC is equal to £5,208.18. If we go further into the video, and assuming it was filmed right after the transaction, the market value of 1 BTC was £4,954.98, which is equal to a gap of £253.20, which roughly translates to a 4.86 % price increase. This means that you are already paying a higher margin than the current price on the market, thus generating revenue for the BATM operator.



Going back a bit on the video you'll see the following screen which shows you the fee you are going to pay (if you accept) and you'll get the information regarding how much you'll get in this exchange:



The fixed fee is 2.50 GBP for this transaction to occur. The value of the BTC that you'll get is fairly simple to calculate - They just take the £20, subtract the 2.50 fee and divide it by the current exchange fee (£5,208.18), netting the user 0.003359 BTC. This transaltes to global fee of around 16.80 %! Altough high, bear in mind that there's always a price to pay considering that you're using a machine such as a BATM vs buying it in an exchange where you'll need to complete KYC to buy/sell BTC (for example).

Don't have high hopes in being reimbursed by the BATM operator - you agreed to pay the fee so he doesn't have the legal obligation to (re)pay you with some % of the fees. My suggestion is that you don't let yourself fall into one of these traps again and be very aware of the fees that are being charged to you no matter where you get your BTC from (be it from an exchange, p2p, BATM, etc). Usually the more anonymous the method, the higher the fee you'll end up paying though ...

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[1]https://coinatmradar.com/charts/buy-fees/united-kingdom/
[2]https://www.generalbytes.com/en/
[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Os6ydYe2Uw

I remember a post from before in which someone in the UK wrote that he has an ATM and charges over 20% in fees, but in your case the fee is definitely something that can not be called that, but it is a pure robbery. The only thing that still comes to my mind is that the price of Bitcoin has lost in value from the moment you made a purchase to the moment you imported your private key from paper into a crypto wallet.

Next time, check the price of BTC online before the final purchase, and compare it with what should be displayed on the ATM screen - anything over 10% in the fee is simply too much.

As someone who used BTC ATMs frequently for a couple of years, I would advise you to only use it a last resort unless you want to waste shit load of money on fees, which are generally high (the ones I used had 5-7% fee which doesn't seem too high at first, but it adds up, especially if you are buying & selling bigger amounts) but not as high as in your case. Maybe that ATM has some fixed fee on top of the standard percentage fee.

The only good thing when it comes to BTC ATM is that you can buy and sell BTC anonymously. At least that's was the case with the ATMs I used so far, don't know whats the situation in UK when it comes to that as I know in come countries you have to give your mobile number.

Thank you, I did use that link to initially find the ATM. I have emailed the contact via that site but yet to hear anything back.

I suspected this could be a lesson learned. It was an initial test, £40 in, and got £22.xx back out, which felt a little harsh.

It's good to confirm I am partially on the right tracks. That site doesn't give much in terms of fee's, I think there are only a handful available, unless I am viewing incorrectly.

ATMs do charge high fees compared to exchanges, but that's just way too high. As said above, you should probably start by looking for the ATM provider and ask them. You can start from here: https://coinatmradar.com/country/225/bitcoin-atm-united-kingdom/

Some of them even have "fee reporting" enabled.

You might want to search up the atm provider you used or contact their support about this as you've not given us much info.

Did you only convert a smaller amount (eg £5)? It's possible the atm charges a % fee and a fixed fee for conversions (they have to pay a transaction fee anyway to send you the funds).

It is cheaper to use online exchanges such as coinbase though, it just depends on what you want it for though (if it was just to test out buying with a bitcoin atm for example).

Hi all, I am really new to the bitcoin arena. Recently purchased a Ledger Nano stick.

Setup an electrum wallet, all seems okay so far. Although I think I have made the mistake of doing the wallet first, maybe for another time

Purchased some BTC from an ATM, got home with my paper wallet, and managed to work out how to load it on.
To then discover I pretty much got around 55% back to what I originally spent, within the same day.

Is that normal? Do ATM's charge high fee's, tried searching but couldn't find out much about it.

Many thanks