Koinal review 2023

What is Koinal?

You can use multiple payment methods to buy cryptocurrency on the Koinal platform, including cards, SWIFT and SEPA transfers and, coming soon, Apple Pay. The company boasts that paying with a card speeds up the process, and says its “know your customer” verification process is fast too.

Bulgaria-based Koinal isn’t registered with the UK financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority – only UK-based cryptocurrency exchanges are required to register. Registration covers anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism checks as cryptocurrency is not regulated in the UK.

Beyond the ability to buy cryptocurrency using your card, Koinal is rather limited in what it offers. You have to own a cryptocurrency wallet address before you can buy or sell any of the supported coins. Fees also vary widely depending on which cryptocurrency you’re buying and can run quite high for certain coins like Ethereum.

When we checked Koinal in March 2022, if you use a card to buy cryptocurrency, Koinal will always convert the transaction to USD (so you’ll likely be charged a conversion fee by your card provider). When you buy your cryptocurrency the coins will be delivered to your wallet address.

However, if you make a bank transfer, you can create a balance in GBP on Koinal to buy cryptocurrency, and you can withdraw it as fiat currency.

There’s a minimum transaction amount of $50, but if you’re depositing money in GBP or EUR, the minimum is £100 or €100.

• If this is your first exchange. Koinal is easy to sign up for and you can buy some of the major cryptocurrencies fairly fast. However, you’ll need to set yourself up with a cryptocurrency wallet address first.
• If you’re switching exchanges. You’ll be able to make almost instant purchases using your credit or debit card (quite a few other exchanges also offer these). However, you may be caught out by the varying transaction fees.

Our verdict: Is Koinal any good?

Koinal’s main selling point is that its overall purchasing process can be done in a matter of minutes because users can buy cryptocurrency using their credit or debit card. As a user, this means you don’t have to wait for a bank to complete a transfer before being able to purchase your chosen coin. This speeds up the whole process, making it more achievable to take advantage of favourable price movements when they happen. However, there are other exchanges that also offer credit and debit cards as payment methods.

That’s pretty much all Koinal has to offer. It’s vague about its exact fees and in our road test these varied widely depending on which coin we were planning to buy and the amount. Koinal is also rather restricted in terms of usability when it comes to fiat currencies. Overall, the user experience and registration process are decent enough, but there are limitations compared to some other exchanges.

Finder ratings for Koinal

• How we rate our crypto exchanges and platforms

  Finder's editors objectively assess each platform across a spectrum of performance metrics using a system of 1 to 5 stars, which are designed to help you assess a crypto platform's strengths and weaknesses. You can read our full methodology here.

  Our rating and selection of the best crypto exchanges is based on the same criteria as our annual Crypto Trading Platform Awards, updated by our editorial team throughout the year to reflect changes in the market.

What to know about Koinal

Beyond the fact that you can use your credit or debit card to buy cryptocurrency, it’s important to understand how purchases, deposits and withdrawals with Koinal work.

Currently, if you use a card, you need to use US dollars to make your cryptocurrency purchase. This means you’re likely to incur an additional cost due to the exchange rate fee your bank or card company charges you. Then you can only withdraw in euros, although there are plans in the future to introduce pounds sterling as an option. It’s also worth noting that if you did choose to use a credit card to purchase cryptocurrency, your card provider would treat this as a cash transaction and you would be charged a cash advance fee, further adding to the cost of your cryptocurrency purchase.

• Supported cryptocurrencies

  Koinal supports 8 of the major cryptocurrencies:

  • BTC
  • ETH
  • USDT
  • XRP
  • BCH
  • USDC
  • LTC
  • AVAX

• Transferring fiat and cryptocurrency

  Transferring fiat currency to make a purchase is made simple through the varied payment options Koinal provides. The quickest and most efficient way to do this is to input your card information, which can then be used to make cryptocurrency purchases. However, there is also the option to make a bank transfer, although this will take more time.

  It is also worth noting that you may not receive your Bitcoin or other supported coins immediately. As soon as the payment has been made, Koinal will initiate the transfer. But how long it takes for you to receive your cryptocurrency will depend on the mining speed.

• Fees and costs

  Koinal keeps information regarding its fees relatively close to its chest. It doesn’t charge a deposit fee. Meanwhile, its withdrawal fee is €5 for amounts between €100 and €5,000 and €10 for amounts over €5,000.

  However, its transaction fees are more varied. While it claims to keep costs to a minimum, our road test showed that the “withdrawal fee” when purchasing Bitcoin or Ethereum differed drastically. To purchase $50 of BTC, the withdrawal fee was quoted as $4.21. But to buy the same amount of ETH you would need to pay a “withdrawal fee” of $59.38, more than the initial fiat purchase amount.

  Fiat withdraw and deposit fees

  Deposit	Withdrawal
  £0	€5 between €100 and €5,000, €10 for €5,000+

  Cryptocurrency withdraw and deposit fees

  Deposit	Withdrawal
  £0	Depends on coin and amount

What is it like to use Koinal?

Koinal has a decent user interface and its KYC process is relatively easy to follow.

Getting started

Account registration can all be done through the website and takes under 10 minutes.

Identity verification

Verifying your identity can be done through the website and your mobile. The main thing to note is that you will need to submit proof of address as well as your photo ID.

Koinal app

You can buy and sell cryptocurrencies at the touch of a button through Koinal’s mobile app.

Quick transactions

Koinal allows you to purchase cryptocurrencies using your credit or debit card, making transactions almost instantaneous.

Does Koinal have good customer support?

Opinions on Koinal’s customer support are mixed. It offers email support, as well as a “contact us” form on its site. Its customer service team is available 24/7, which is definitely a plus. Most reviews on Trustpilot are also on the positive side, with users reporting fast responses and friendly staff. But there are some reports of scams and customers being unhappy with how this has been dealt with.

List of services on Koinal

Koinal is pretty streamlined in terms of its services. Its main purpose is to provide a way for users to make quick and easy cryptocurrency purchases. Therefore services are limited to trading and promotions.

• Trading on Koinal

  Once you have input your wallet address and your billing information, trading on Koinal is relatively simple. Within a couple of clicks, you can purchase your chosen cryptocurrency, paying for the whole thing using a card.

  Koinal also holds its price for 20 minutes once the transaction has started in order to protect you against some of the price fluctuations. You can withdraw funds by filling in the bank account form and confirming your details. Withdrawals are made in EUR and can take up to 4 business days to reach your account.

• Promotions on Koinal

  If you are new to Koinal then you can take advantage of its introductory promotion. This gives you a $100 discount in Bitcoin when you make a payment of $1,000 or more. You can access the discount by inputting the promo code “Welcome” into the appropriate box when creating your order.

Trust rating

• Past Hacks

  Koinal has not had any past hacks.

• Security audits

  Koinal has not had any security audits. However, it is protected by the 256 Go Daddy SSL certificate and uses the Captcha function. Email addresses are also verified and users have to enable 2FA on their accounts. All card payment transactions are handled in a 3D Secure environment, which must then be verified with an SMS code.

• Insurance

  Koinal doesn’t have any sort of insurance in place. This is largely because it requires users to give a cryptocurrency wallet address, which is something it doesn’t provide.

Signing up on Koinal

Go through a step-by-step guide on the sign-up process, and how to pass KYC.

• Step 1: Register online

  Head to the Koinal website and click on Register.

• Step 2: Enter and confirm your email address

  Once you have entered your email address, you will receive a verification email almost instantly. Click on this and you will be taken back to Koinal’s website.

• Step 3: Activate 2FA

  Koinal uses the Google Authenticator app as 2FA. You will need to download the Authenticator app and then scan the QR code on the Koinal site. Once that is set up, enter the 6-digit code from the app to log in.

• Step 4: Submit a photo of your ID

  You can’t make any transactions on Koinal until your identity is verified. To do this you need to submit a photo of your government-issued ID.

• Step 5: Scan your face

  To confirm your identity, Koinal wants to scan your face. You can do this via your laptop’s webcam, or if that doesn’t work, you can scan the QR code on your smartphone and use that to complete the scan.

• Step 6: Wait for verification

  Before moving to the next step, you will need to wait for your ID to be verified. This happens comparatively quickly in under 3 minutes.

• Step 7: Submit proof of address

  The next stage before you can actually start using Koinal is to verify your address. To do this you will need to submit a recent utility bill, bank statement, credit card statement or lease agreement.

• Step 8: Wait for verification (again)

  This is the frustrating part. Verifying your address can take up to 6 hours and you are unable to make any transactions before that is done.

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