To be clear, this is a Coinmama review.

Coinmama is a cryptocurrency exchange which has been operational since 2013. Coinmama is registered in Slovakia but is owned by New Bit Ventures Limited and Coinmama headquarters are in Israel. Exchange offers its services to customers in most countries round the globe, and is operational in 24 US states. Contrary to many competitors, Coinmama provides customers with an opportunity to purchase Bitcoin and Ethereum directly from Credit or Credit cards.

Also it offer possibility to transfer funds for cryptocurrency purchases using Western Union. However, the downside is that it does not provide platform for trading and has no peer-to-peer transaction environment. Instead, all cryptocurrencies you buy with your card are transferred directly from the company, which makes Coinmama significantly secure and more transparent. Coinmama has earned reputation as one of the easiest ways to buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum with nothing but credit card, lifting the heavy burden of education and cumbersome transaction processes of the client’s shoulders. Company allows customers to purchase 150$ /EUR worth of cryptocurrency without full identity verification.

Coinmama Account Verification

Notwithstanding the foregoing, in order to make the purchase of higher amounts of cryptocurrencies, users will have to confirm their identity with copies of official government issued ID. This is necessary for compliance with KYC and AML policies. Also users are required to fill verification form including full name, date of birth, gender and credit/ debit card number. Coinmama will ask you to submit both sides of the document. Pictures have quality requirement – they should not be blurry and have valid dates (like credit card expiry date). We although would like to highlight here that Coinmama has a very good compliance department – most of the documents are usually processed within 1-2 hours since the submission.

Coinmama Trading platform

As we have already mentioned in the first paragraph of our Coinmama review, Coinmama offers very limited functionality. In contrast to exchanges like PrimeCrypto or Bittrex which provide users with professional trading platform powered with a full set of tools and studies, Coinmama’s options are limited to the possibility of buying Bitcoin and Ethereum directly from the company’s personal inventory. Users simply proceed to create an order by selecting how much Bitcoins or Ethers they want to buy, putting their wallet address and then finalizing transaction with credit card details once the checkout page comes up. Once the payment is complete, the payment processing system will process the transaction and send coins to user’s wallet. Coinmama has a minimum purchase requirement 0.1 BTC. Another thing that users have to remember before dealing with Coinmama is that they don’t provide personal wallets for storage. Instead, users have to provide details of their own wallet.

How to Buy Bitcoin with Coinmama

To buy Bitcoin using credit/debit cards payment method, Coinmama doesn’t demand users register their credit or debit card to purchase digital currency on the exchange, but does not let clients sell bitcoins. Once users have registered, they can go ahead and create the order by entering the quantity they want to purchase, inputting their wallet address, followed by their credit/debit card details on the checkout page. The company does not store client’s credit or debit card information on its servers. After making the payment, the credit card processor will then process the transaction (which could take up to twenty minutes), before being transferable to the client’s preferred wallet. Once the payment and wallet address is confirmed, the digital currency is sent immediately to the user. At present, Coinmama supports a minimum purchase of 60USD, or its EUR equivalent, although this is dependent on the price of Bitcoin (the effective amount of minimum purchase is whatever the listed price of 0.1 BTC is.)

Unlike most exchange services, Coinmama does not offer an online wallet for users to store their digital assets on the exchange. Therefore, once bought, users will need to create a relevant wallet to which Coinmama can send their digital currency once purchased. To confirm wallet addresses, users will get an email link from the exchange to let them verify that the address is valid. Because of this email confirmation system, clients are unable to buy bitcoin for others. Users that wish to transfer bitcoin to someone else’s wallet should check the guideline for doing so through their wallet provider.

Coinmama fees

Coinmama charges customers quite hefty fees comparison to those charged by the majority of competitors. A 5.5% fee is charged per transaction, plus additional 5% fee is charged upon each credit /debit card transaction. In addition, customers may be charged a Cash Advance fee by their bank or card issuer depending on whether the financial institution views the transaction as a ‘cash’ transaction. All in all, users should be ready for total of 10% when making cryptocurrency purchases with Coinmama. Below you can see a detailed break-down of how much a purchase of $2000 worth of Bitcoin will cost you

Deposits and Withdrawals

Users can proceed with depositing and withdrawing funds using one of the following methods:

• Credit/debit cards: You can make payments on Coinmama using MasterCard or VISA cards. VISA/MasterCard Payments are supported by the company’s Simplex payment processor.
• Cash: You can buy cryptocurrency from Coinmama via Western Union transfer. Unfortunately, there is no way to link your bank account to Coinmama

Customer support

The customer support for Coinmama is pretty limited by only giving support via email. There is very high traffic from new users joining the exchange at times, and the support can be slow, which is a typical feature of most cryptocurrency exchange platforms. However, Coinmama also provides a comprehensive FAQ page with answers to most questions any user would have.

As with most crypto exchanges, online reviews of Coinmama customer support response has been mixed. However, it doesn’t seem that there are any significant issues with response times, when the traffic isn’t too high, as most questions consistently replied within 24 hours (with delays expected during public holidays or over the weekend). Its stated on the website business hours are Sunday to Thursday, from 11 pm to 7 am Pacific Time.

Is Coinmama safe?

Although Coinmama is well behind competitors in terms of user base and number of transactions, they are officially registered with FINCEN in the US as a money service business. Also, due to the fact that Coinmama makes almost immediate transfer of purchased coins to users’ wallets it is very unlikely to become targeted by hackers. Coinmama have greatly simplified the whole process by having no peer-to-peer exchange between users so they simply make their cash on commissions they charge per transaction, which to some extent justifies why fees are so high. Although, we have not been able to track any complaints on Coinmama’s security system.

Conclusion

Coinmama offers some advantages, including purchases with Credit Card or Western Union, direct transfer of coins from company’s own inventory and safe and transparent environment. On the other hand, Coinmama is unlikely to capture the interest of professional traders who are used to full platform functionality with charts and technical studies. Another disadvantage is that platform is limited to buyers only, so selling whatever you buy from Coinmama will require account with some other exchange.